Crafting motherhood on stones

Deepkamal Kaur

Tribune News Service

Jalandhar, May 8

As everyone is passing through the darkest phase of life owing to COVID-19 pandemic worldwide, a city-based artist Ambika Bhatia (40) is perhaps attempting to dispel this gloom through her art.

Having created various art forms at her place in Guru Teg Bahadur Nagar, Bhatia these days is enjoying making stone sculptures depicting the bonding between a mother and a child. Working as Fevicryl Certified Professional for Pidilite, she has made several stone paintings showing mother carrying a new born in her arms and looking at him lovingly. Her other paintings show bonding between a mother and a teenage daughter.

Says Bhatia, “The theme of mother-child bonding has always been close to my heart. As Mother’s Day was around, I somehow worked around this theme and came out with a good collection of artifacts. My fixation for the theme also comes from a close bonding which I share with my mother Dr Achla Bhatia, an educationist by profession, who has always been my mentor and support. These works are also a tribute to my daughter Tiya, who has always been a big support in all my creative endeavours.”

Taking due advantage of the present grim and dismal situation, Bhatia has indeed scored applauds from myriads sections of society for her aesthetic compositions and majestic works of art.

Holding degrees of Bachelor of Design, Master of Fine Arts, BEd and MEd, she comes from a family of intellectuals with her father Jatinder Bhatia, a Chartered Accountant, and elder brother Sameer Bhatia, a lawyer.

An artist by heart, a designer by skill, besides being a virtuoso by ability, Ambika possesses to her credit a skill of a phenomenal nature. Having taught in educational institutes for many years in the past, her creativity is long-standing, deep-rooted and time-honoured.

Her collection ranges from the decoupage bottles to stone paintings, from mural works to Dhokra art, from stone mandala art to crackle effects, acrylics and oil paintings. Having sculpted brush puppets to casting applique work and Rajasthani Jharokas, orchestrating coffee paintings to Jaipur’s faux blue pottery, concerting clay articles, coasters to terracotta plates, her works offer unfading, graphic compositions.