This week we welcome Natasha Das. Born in Assam, India, and trained in Florence, Italy, Das is a cross-disciplinary artist working from her studios in both Assam and New York City. Das’s work lies at an intersection of materials and methods, blurring the lines between approach and content. She works primarily with oil paint and thread, layering the individuality of each material to build a surface upon which the two coexist inextricably.
Das began her career perfecting traditional portraiture, with a keen eye for color, figure, and composition. Increasingly frustrated with the constraints of her own expertise, Das began to unlearn what she was taught, shifting her concentration to the materials themselves.
Das introduced thread into her practice after training under an exclusively male artisanal weaving group in Assam, that is rooted in Aari embroidery. Artistically, Das’s greatest intention is to bridge an ongoing conversation between two strictly gendered mediums; oil painting and embroidery.
Her work is currently included in Through the Eye of the Needle, an exhibition at Hudson Valley MOCA running through March 18. Das’s work was recently shown in the fall of 2022 as part of an exhibition at Hunterdon Art Museum in Clinton, New Jersey. You can read a review of that show here.
