Press Release - "I Wake To Sleep" by Soumya Netrabile
Soumya Netrabile
”The Gardeners”
Oil on canvas
40 x 30 inches
2021
pt. 2:
I Wake To Sleep
Soumya Netrabile
Opening - March 13, 2021
Showing Through - Friday, April 2, 2021
Schedule a private viewing
info@part2gallery.com
pt. 2 Gallery is pleased to present I Wake to Sleep, a solo exhibition of new paintings by the Chicago-based artist Soumya Netrabile. Netrabile’s paintings for the exhibition detail two new bodies of work, a series of imagined botanical arrangements, and Requiem, a series of paintings that examine a non-physical space where the soul, energy and nature coexist. These two bodies of work help answer the question “what am I about?” and draw on Netrabile’s intimate encounters with the natural world and perception of beauty.
The exploration of beauty in nature and humanity has been embedded in Netrabile’s conscious and subconscious for years. For the artist, the surrounding woods to her home are an integral space, among them the studio and her home. At certain times a day, the light may be such that in the span of a breath or heartbeat, the contours of a tree or branch may change indefinitely. The depth and detail vary, and the infinite and minute exist simultaneously, too vast to be taken in at once. As such, Soumya’s botanical paintings explore a field beyond the real, merging the imagination, the emotional, and the ephemeral on canvas.
Forging such strong connections with nature, both in its physicality and in the energy it withholds reveals Netrabile’s deep regard for the material universe. The extent to which the artist understands this connection is revealed through her subconscious in the form of a dream she had last winter. While walking with her husband, shoots and sprouts began to grow out of her body. In spite of any effort of her husband’s to shear them down, they kept growing back. Netrabile recalls feeling anger and the inability to stop this growth, and pain with either clipping. The first series of botanical works can be understood as a way to come to terms with this feeling, accepting the metaphysical plane where body and botany are related. In these paintings, flowerlike forms emerge from the center of the canvas, layered marks in deep greens and cadmium reds eventually forming delicate yet wild ensembles. At times, they appear as a form of personal Ichbana, the Japanese idea of arranging flowers and plants as a secret language. By using botanical elements, Netrabile communicates emotions and feelings in a form of meditations to center herself in the search for inner peace.
Soumya Netrabile
”Requiem (Red)”
Oil on canvas
48 x 36 inches
2021
While visually less constrained, Netrabile’s large Requiem paintings allude to a semblance of inner peace. The initial four paintings progress from red (carnality) to green (life) to yellow (light ) and end up with blue (darkness). Following the loss of a family member, Netrabile discovered his garden, thriving despite his passage. The paintings evoke the energy she felt in the garden, wherein each stage of the progression reflects the metaphysical plane of the garden. Ethereal and fleeting, these moments indicate an encompassing energy that passes between human and botanical life in spite of their physical differences.
I wake to sleep takes its title from the poem The Waking by Theodore Roethke. In Netrabile’s understanding of the poem, it teaches us to make living worthwhile, to “taking deep breaths through life, with your eyes open.” When we grasp ephemeral moments of beauty, in nature or in spirit, we come alive to the fact that we are just small observers in a large universe. Yet by understanding our perception and relation to such forces, we are a part of something bigger nonetheless.
Soumya Netrabile was born in Bangalore, India and emigrated to the U.S. with her parents when she was 7 years old. She first studied at Rutgers University, College of Engineering and then later at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She is currently residing near Chicago.