Alakananda Mukerji “Anonymous Moments: Drawings, Paintings, Prints”

Blue Mountain Gallery

[Image: Alakananda Mukerji "Aradhana" Oil on canvas 24x24 in.]

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Blue Mountain Gallery presents ‘Anonymous Moments,’ an exhibition featuring drawings and paintings by Alakananda Mukerji. The new body of work is from 2017 and 2018.

Alka says there are 8,537,673 souls in New York City. Life in New York City is a terrific tangle, a constant commingling, an exquisite dance. Sights and sounds are all around the city: venerable stone buildings, soaring towers of steel and glass, hummings and thrummings and honkings and revvings, and so many, many faces and voices. Alka’s art comes from her immediate and observed environment. Living in Manhattan, she is inspired day after day by an incessant stream of color and texture, by the clash of architectures new and old, by the culture of the city and of the people who live and breathe among it all — ever creating and recreating New York, and yet ever formed and reformed by it.

She states “Time and again, I return to the theme of the street musicians of the city. For me, they are the very purest distillation of the New York spirit — profound and reflective and yet playful and fleeting; active and moving, yet grounded and grounding: pavement below, firmament above — and usually the iconic coffee cup nearby. They are the pulse of the city; they are our collective heartbeat. Their song flows into my art.”
Presently, she is working in oil, acrylic and watercolor and experimenting in various methods. Here, too, in her fusion of media and technique, she pays homage to her hometown, the most cosmopolitan — built by hands and ideas and tastes from every corner of the world. Conferring to her Bagels and kimchi, anyone? Why not?! And maybe an espresso and kheer for dessert? Then we can head to the museum. Which one? Now this might take some time.

A painting begins in the artist’s thinking process. She spends days contemplating what she will bring to the canvas. She walks down the broad, bright, crowded avenues where the businesspeople clamor and haggle and the visitors gaze up in wonder and hold out their camera phones in oohs and ahhs. But she also strolls down shaded side blocks — past small churches and neighborhood temples and homes and schools, and small shops where women and men have been sewing hems or selling books for a hundred years. And then there are the rivers, and the big green park, and the dog walkers and the joggers and the stroller pushers and the children laughing and throwing popcorn to the pigeons: so many beautiful moments, so many beautiful spaces. From all of these she draws her inspiration.

Alka remembers Rauschenberg was very important to her early painting — and always wanted to ask him how he chose his subject and colors. Once Rauschenberg wrote, “Painting relates to both art and life”. Alka says “I believe I understand now. Or am closer now to understanding than I was long ago. He is part of my Manhattan, too. And always will be. Among 8,537,673 souls in New York City, I, Alakananda Mukerji, am one of them.”