Ipsita Deb in conversation with Portrait Artist Subhojit Bhar

Ipsita : Subhojit, please take us through your journey. How did you first discover your passion for painting? Also, about your techniques, medium, and the colours you use.

I am a self-taught portrait artist who likes to work both in traditional and digital media. For the most part of the day though, I am a working professional whom you can find hunched in front of a computer screen crunching away numbers on some disfigured spreadsheet. What’s left of the remaining sixteen hours is an appetite for unconventional aesthetics.

S.B : Please tell us about your artistic style and the influences that have shaped it. What subjects or themes do you find most inspiring to paint, and why do they resonate with you? Why portraits?

I tend to draw heavy inspiration from the likes of Nikolas Antoniou, Jeremy Mann and Jenny Saville.

My works revolve primarily around contemporary portraiture in amalgamation with abstract elements. Some have coined a fancy term for this particular genre, if I can even call it one; ‘Disruptive Realism’. Must admit, has a nice ring to it. I have always harboured this conviction that, facets of abstraction are essentially the only formative way to express the little nuances and the profundity of a character, both at once. And so, if you ask, why portraiture and why not full-fledged abstraction instead, as in cubism, neoplasticism, Fauvism, or spatialism, I might quote Scarface on this one, “The eyes, Chico. They never lie.”

Well, for me, it’s the whole face that counts.

Ipsita : I see you have a penchant for the colour gray. Why gray?

S.B: Not particularly gray, but black and white. That must be for my endearing partiality towards the usage of negative space in any artwork. So much can be conveyed with so little. What more apt than white to capture such profundity? And what more apt than black to complement that?

Ipsita : This one (P-4) is very interesting. I love the way you have done away with any detail or feature that could tell something about the person’s history, culture, whereabouts. Would you like to tell something about this one?

S.B: I remember Nathan Fowkes saying at some comic-con while demonstrating a live charcoal work, that he was desperately trying to keep it simple. In the end, what matters is the efficient composition of light and shadow values, i.e., chiaroscuro. All else are simply redundant.

Ipsita : Could you tell something about this particular piece (P2)? From our last conversation, I know you have done some commissioned work, in portraits. You draw people from your known circles. This particular portraiture seems to tell a story.

S.B: This one comes directly from a reference image that I came across in a telegram group where members share their personal snaps and artists can pick those that they like and can have a go at them. There’s no restriction on medium selection. She is a fine artist herself and I admire her for her works. In this particular case, both the selfies felt pretty interesting to me. It is always a challenge to put on paper the proper emotions that are portrayed by such unconventional expressions rather than just replicating normal mugshots.

Ipsita : The art world has evolved significantly in recent years, with technology playing a larger role in the creative process and promotion. How do you adapt to these changes, and what are your thoughts on the intersection of art and technology?

S.B: For me personally, i prefer to snatch the best of both the worlds. We evolved from cave walls to papers to digital screens. Who knows what else is out there yet to be invented! As goes the saying, the only thing constant is change.