Enthusiastic and ebullient, Madhuri Bhaduri has many facets to her personality. Early in life she imbibed an intuitive feel for music from her mother — a renowned vocalist of Indian Classical Music — and a love for sports from her father who qualified as a badminton player for national tournaments. Madhuri herself, excelled in badminton and represented Maharashtra at national level championships.
From childhood she learnt the value of discipline, to focus on the task at hand, to improvise and to strategize, and above all to accept the highs and lows that occur in life.As a result, Madhuri has always attempted to move forward, navigating around obstacles towards new vistas, exploring ideas and acquiring new skills.
After graduating in economics, she studied French, took a course in Hotel Management and formally enrolled for a master’s degree in art. Her first exhibition of paintings in 1986 was a moment of self-realisation : she knew that she wanted to become a painter for it empowered her search for self-expression.
As a painter, Madhuri has traversed different trajectories: the representational, the abstract, and often a combination of both.She has experimented with landscapes and figurative compositions.While her figurative works tend towards stylization, her landscapes display a preoccupation with colour and its varied nuances. In her early works she was intrigued by the effects of light and shade: of sunlight filtering through foliage, the shadow patterns on a group of buildings on a street, or the shimmering expanse of the ocean as it stretches towards the horizon.
Gradually, however, her paintings evinced a move from that which was recognizable to that which was intangible and amorphous. The paintings became the substance of dreams and memories. These works, textured and many layered, find rhythms in the different densities of colours : translucent yellows and whites juxtaposed against brooding browns, moody blues and exultant reds. They evoke a nostalgia for places that dwell in one’s imagination.
Madhuri’s prolific talent has found expression in sculpture by crafting scrap metal into utilitarian and decorative objects. She finds alternating between the two dimensionality of painting and the three dimensionality of sculpture to be both refreshing and rewarding.
For Madhuri, her work in art has been a constant process of assimilation and introspection.A Liberating experience, it has served as a perennial source of energy that has revitalized and rejuvenated her. With time, it has brought self-awareness and become a form of meditation. Says Madhuri “I feel closest to God when I paint.”
