What, Why, How: Vasundhara Tolia

What:

I was born in Kolkata, India and received an excellent education there. I became a doctor and I traveled across half the world to get further training in medicine to US. Initially, I always thought I would return to India, however, this country insinuated itself under my skin to such an extent that it became home.

I have faced a lot of unique challenges and opportunities that have shaped me to become who I am as a person, a physician and eventually an artist and a poet. Being an immigrant citizen, I have had to become resilient to adapt here and become bicultural to integrate ourselves in the matrix of USA.

When I was thinking of retiring from my career as a Pediatric Gastroenterologist, my biggest dread was what would I do. I had dedicated my entire life to being a teacher, mentor, clinician and a researcher. These were all my lifelines, meeting research deadlines gave me a high. So what would be my cocaine if I gave up medical career?

I pondered over several options, knowing that writing would always remain in my blood – after writing over a hundred and fifty papers, book chapters and other contributions to medical literature, one can’t divorce oneself from continuing some sort of penmanship. So that’s where my penchant for poetry comes, however, I knew that just writing poems would not be enough for my creative juices. I have always been loved art. I have decorated my own home and am happy with that. So it seemed like pursuit of visual art could be an option to fill time. I started to take lessons in painting and drawing at local art centers, I’d miss classes due to travels and it was after three to four years of this off and on learning that things started to fall in place. I started to see the lights and shadows and get overall feeling of highlights and focal points. Now, painting is my passion. Every time I finish a painting, I get as much pleasure and sense of accomplishment as I did when a medical paper was accepted for publication. I love to create a series of paintings based on a theme. I collect ideas on my travels, by visiting exhibitions, reading and develop them in response to calls for exhibitions and competitions.

Why:

At every every stage of my life, despite my ups and downs, I choose to be creative. I buoy back from the depths of despair because my origins and support of my family help me snap back from negative thoughts. As a physician, my job was to heal and mend. Now I choose to spread the same healing with my strokes and sprinkling brilliant colors.

It was very necessary to pour my energy and redirect my passion into a new direction so that I continue to have a meaningful purpose to my life. I feel very fortunate to have this opportunity to be able to be creative in a different way. Now it seems that one lifetime is not enough to execute all ideas bubbling in my mind. I have rewired myself into visual art. My works connect nature, humanity and space – these are my main inspirations. Space has fascinated me especially since the discovery of the black hole. Overall, I attempt to catch each subject, whether a human, animal, still life, nature, space or abstraction in a particular moment in time. My work also depicts life experiences and memories. They can be representational or abstract when they don’t represent the graphic image of a specific person or place, rather they authenticate my experience and memories. I want the viewer to interpret it in their own way to discern my language of strokes and colors. My painting enables me to communicate on a personal level without words.

How:

I am a strong advocate for human rights, specially women’s. I did a solo show depicting roles of women at various stages of life in different capacities. I expanded on this theme further to empower Women’s Role in everyday life in the community, state, country and the world by using her as my muse – WOMAN – through art . Painting women with different techniques makes my work personally more meaningful. I like to explore newer horizons using color, texture and their relationship by experimenting further using processes of glazing, sanding, adding and subtracting in the background and in figures themselves. It is a true joy to see these characters unfold a new story. My women are role models disseminating love, peace and inspiration. My goal is to provide a spiritually uplifting experience while delivering message of respect and equality for women to the world. I enjoy visiting different parts of the world, exploring diverse cultures and social environments, seeing their natural beauty and meeting people who I may depict on a canvas.

I share this story because I think life and art is all about connection with each other. Sometimes my pieces portray emotions of how people don’t connect with each other and sometimes they do. But to see the emotion they carry into each person’s life and how they make that piece their own, that for me is witnessing of a powerful connection and power of art. Art for me is everything. Like someone told me once “it is like breathing for you, isn’t it?” To be able to share all kind of emotions and feelings through art and have it mean something to me, ultimately having me lead to a connection with this person (even if we never meet) that to me is very humbling and one of the reasons why I get up every day with passion to work more and more. Thank you to anyone who has ever connected in some way to my art.

An artist’s journey is often times one of discovery, learnings, failures and successes. I think this becomes even more true for me as I am self-taught and often had to find my own way in both artistic style and means of expression. Since starting to learn seven years ago, I had tried out many different styles of painting, from realistic faces and figures, landscapes to abstraction of all themes, while at the same time figuring out where is the best avenue for my art. Three years ago one of those experimentation gave birth to a series I called Woman’s Journey. From this series I found my voice and have since then let that voice guide me to mature as an artist, as a professional and as a person. The current work with abstraction on figures has been an evolution of this voice.

Over the last four years art has given me a life I never imagined, allowing me to connect with people from all walks of life and from all around the world. I have sent my works to galleries and competitions and have received the kind of support which makes one get up every day with even deeper commitment and passion to keep creating. Art has also allowed me to find joy through my brush. I can say that I feel blessed to be a full time artist, doing what I love and evolve daily. There truly is no greater joy in life than knowing that what you love is what also inspires your life and makes you want to give more and share more. I am a believer that in life we must first give and it is this belief that I donate art to many charities to say thanks to all of those in my immediate environment who have supported me and who continue to believe in my work and in me, giving me the energy to keep creating and giving back. It keeps me connected and I build bridges based on that connection to help build a better world. I feel blessed to be able to do my part via my paint brush.

What I also love about art is the way it surpasses all of the human limitations that we place on our society and our interactions with each other. All the ways we separate ourselves, be it by our age, ethnicity, culture, geography and even interests; all of these boundaries melt away when we take in and connect with art and creative forms of expression. I try subtle ways to express myself and my perceptions of what it means to be a person in our modern day world. I love hearing feedback from viewers about my art because the feedback is as diverse as the people. I have always felt that artists of our time have the social responsibility to use art not to just reflect the world around them but to engage the world around them in that reflection.

Bio:

Vasundhara Tolia has rewired herself after retiring from medical field into learning art. Her works connect nature, humanity and space which are her main inspirations.

She is a member of Birmingham Bloomfield Art Center, Detroit Artist Market, Anton Art Center, Detroit Society Of Women Painters and Sculptors, Birmingham Women Painters Society, Northville Arts Center, Grosse Pointe Arts Association and Scarab Club. Her works are in private collections, several of her paintings have been published in Art Ascent Thematic Collections.

At community level, she works with Michigan Association of Physicians of Indian Origin (MAPI) , Asian Indian Women’s Association, Haven, FAR therapeutics, Ted Lindsey Foundation, Gildas Club, MAI Family Services. She is also a member of Michigan Poetry Society.

Links:

Where to buy the art- Please call and/or from the website vasutolia.com Facebook
Instagram @vasutolia
Twitter @Toliavasu

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Linda K. Sienkiewicz is a writer, poet, and artist:
Multi-finalist award winning novel: In the Context of Love
Picture book: Gordy and the Ghost Crab
Poetry chapbook: Sleepwalker

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