Gurpran Rau

Makes art from reflecting on the spiritual aspect of travel

I was completely bowled over by Gurpran Rau’s painting’s exhibited at Kings College some years ago, She one of the city’s most interesting artists.

Having led a nomadic life travelling and living in many countries including Bhutan and San Francisco she stores up imagery from her soul-felt experiences and then converts them into exciting artworks that explore many concepts with more than a dash of enlivening eastern colour. She says she travels physically, psychologically and emotionally and then expresses her recollections through colour and pattern.

Maps and mapping experiences through art are a core theme as she imposes structure and grids onto images from recollections developing a process to retrospective emotions and memory. The passage of time is represented as we pass through this world and also natural patterns occurring in nature. Symbols and links permeate her work and recurring themes and human experience is represented as sacred, gentle and free to roam in the world while soaking it up spiritually in all its colour, richness and poignance.

She participates in Cambridge Open studios

She often incorporates photographs and faces which typify or mark the settings and are usually quite haunting or striking with connotations of the world within at the place and the settings she find her self in physically, psychologically, visually and emotionally.

Her positive and dreamy style is has an aesthetic of its own and is quite uplifting and cheerful giving you plenty to think about in her art.

Listen in to Cambridge Arts Round Up Episode 16 or see her work

Listen to Cambridge Arts Round Up Episode 44