Shivani Dugar was born in Calcutta in 1979, and grew up in Bangalore, India. After completing her degree in finance at Georgetown University, Washington D.C. she decided to pursue her lifelong dream and enrolled at Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, New York for a Masters in Fine Art Degree. She has had successful solo & group exhibitions in US and abroad. She currently lives in New York City with her husband and two children.
The abstract paintings created by Shivani bring out the multitude of textures found in nature as it provides different ambiances at various times of the day. Her works carry an element of nature which is visible through a wash of tones and strong mark-making which she had mastered via the technique of Printmaking. Shivani has explored this theme in a myriad of ways to arrive at her images. She is able to create a sense of light, movement and depth in each image by interlocking and layering her marks, allowing the viewer to travel through each piece. They lead the mind to wander into the realm of nature with a sense of obscurity and ambiguity, and then let the viewers think about it and draw their own conclusions.
“My paintings are abounding with vestiges of memory and experience and my search for the unseen is implanted in every layer….” – Shivani Dugar
Remembrance, RL Fine Arts, New York
“For Shivani Dugar, Nature is sacred. Through her art she looks to create a sacred space, a tactile space, which can be entered into by the viewer. where she continues to explore the natural world, both seen and unseen, shifting and changing before and around us.”
– Peter Louis, Co-Founder, RL Fine Arts
Sacred Spaces , Mahua Art Gallery, Bangalore
Shivani Dugar’s passage to light, to the realization of her own artistic pulse, turns more than a sidelong glance at Richter and Gaitonde, at their mastery of the métier. For her oils on canvas today have emerged as meditations on nature, as wordless paeans to the beautiful unsung, to its unnamed hues, its intrinsic moods, vistas, melodies.”
– Aditi De , Author, Editor and Columnist
Shivani Dugar – Natural Reflections, RL Fine Arts, New York
“A journey through the art of Shivani Dugar involves a journey into the soul and essence of nature celebrating the abundant beauty of nature and the elements, air, earth, wind, fire and space. She absorbs and is absorbed by the natural world, taking it’s sights and sounds, it’s colors and it’s textures and reflecting them into meditations on nature, in all it’s awesome ‘sublime’ power to it’s delicacy of pattern and texture.”
– Peter Louis, Co- Founder, RL Fine Arts
Time Imagined, Merritt Gallery, Washington D.C
“Through the interplay of light, color, time and emotion, her paintings bear witness to the dynamic, inspirational energy of nature. The artist invites viewers on a visual journey to explore the spaces she has created; magical, elusive moments that foster reflection on memories past and futures envisioned.”
– Rachel Rubin, Co-Founder, Merritt Gallery
Time Unseen…, Being 3 Gallery, Beijing
We know that the feelings do not have form, but Shivani, through her artistic effort manages to make them real and visible and makes us share in their emotions… thus, her work, a magical summary of life’s many moments.
– Sandro Orlandi, Curator, Being 3 Gallery
Of Life & Landscape, Gallery Art & Soul, Mumbai
Thus the transience of seasons, the vagaries of nature, and ephemeral responses are represented through colors and the transparency of light. Gentle rain, iciness, desert sand, and a cornucopia of emotions come together in a primal celebration. Yet, amidst the colors and sensory narratives on her canvas, stillness predominates and a sense of meditativeness and solitude emerges.
– Nalini S Malaviya, Art Critic
“A personal journey into the essence of nature, Dugar explores the intersection of reminiscence, and looking ahead. She draws parallels between the way physical light animates the landscape and metaphorical light animates the mind, thus demonstrating the different ways nature has been used as a form of human expression”
– www.merrittgallery.com