Apur sangshar.. 'kawtha diyechho''

I have been greatly influenced by Satyajit Ray's work.
Apur sangshar, concludes one of the greatest film series of all time, Satyajit Ray's  Apu Trilogy, which chronicles the life of one ordinary Bengali boy as he traverses the road from childhood to maturity. 
In the story, Apu, ( Soumitra Chatterjee) gets married to  a girl from a well off family and brings her to his one room attic in North Kolkata. The wife, Aparna (potrayed by Sharmila Tagore), brings conjugal bliss into Apu's life. One morning Apu finds a message scribbled on his cigarette pack, reminding him to smoke less! Aparna influences Apu's life with her love and care for her husband. 
    This romantic scene inspired me to create this embroidery.

Step by step embroidery of the cigarette pack.
The design is drawn on fabric using carbon paper and lead pencil. Defining the lines by stem stitch using two strands of Anchor embroidery floss. Hearts have been filled by satin stitch.

 

I never thought myself as an artist in the true sense because I have never had  professional   training in any form of art. I just love art in any form and always tried to learn the best out of everything artistic. When I was a child I painted a scenery of a semi urban scene in water colour as homework of my art class in school.  My teacher felt that I got it painted by an artist in my family. As a punishment I was given five more pictures to paint. I composed and painted five scenes from Kobiguru Rabindranath Tagore's "Pujarini" and showed them to my teacher. She did not say a word and just put right marks on the pages. But I knew she was convinced this time that I did all the paintings. Later, I completed the series of 15 more scenes from "Pujarini". That is how painting and craft came to me. I feel, even if you don't have the formal training, you can do it if you have the passion and will. 

For me, creativity is not just a hobby, it is a way of life.  Embroidery is my passion from my childhood. Working from the scrap.... I have always done that and have always loved to do. Conceiving ideas and putting them into  shape and form is a continuous process for me. Not everything turns out to be perfect, you have to deal with failure . But when you get the right result, the joy is tremendous and this keeps me going.