THE ARTIST
My name is Pravashnee Sankar “Prav” to most.
My childhood was filled with art and nature, with many weekends spent at the nursery or Durban botanical gardens, either as research for one of my siblings art projects, but most likely because my parents just loved plants. I always harboured the desire to create beautiful things with my hands and I learnt early on that I hadn’t inherited their green thumbs, and I stood a better chance painting bushes, trees and flowers than growing them.
Though for the longest time I denied this passion and pursued a more ‘practical’ and ‘typical’ profession…one which would pay the bills.
So I studied and continue to work in the IT industry for the past 20 years…dabbling in all art, design and DIY in my spare time, all the while hearing from friends and family about how lovely everything I paint and make is, but I was always plagued with self-doubt.
As a writer once said, I forget who…but it goes something like this; “if you wake up in the morning, and all you can do is thinking about is writing then you my friend are a writer”…the same could be said of any passion in life… and in my case, it was my heart telling me to get over my fears and embrace the fact that I may not be an archetypal artist with a degree in fine arts, but I have found tranquillity of the soul in art and I want to share that feeling with everyone. So I am taking a leap of faith…this my beginning as an artist and artisan.
THE ART
The paintings are oil based landscapes, seascapes and floral artworks done using the ala prima “wet-on-wet” technique which simply means that each layer of paint is layered on whilst the paint remains wet, under the principle that thin paint sticks to dense paint. All paintings are done on canvas but the sizes vary. No two paintings are identical although some will have different variations sometimes in colour and/or content.
Products
The artisanal products are unique one-off pieces, typically old furniture which started out their lives as one thing, and then are refurbished and sometimes reinvented, but always with the “Prav” flavour.
