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Jessie Kamalavani

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Her art echoes the ideas from the book titled “Grandpa Bunny”, a Little Golden Book published by Disney classic in the 1950s and belonged to her mother, in which Great Grandpa Bunny Bunny teaches several generations of Bunnyville's children how to paint Easter eggs, flowers, butterflies and more before he tells them he has to go away. And the poem "Leisure" by Welsh poet W. H. Davies, published in 1911 where he writes about life being full of cares and no time to stand and stare. They had so much impact on her that she noticed the details in everything around her and take the time to stand and stare.


She fell in love with the colors and the sheen of silk and she paints both sceneries and flowers. She’s also attracted to classical Arabic open doors and blooming flowers as they relate to an optimistic tomorrow. Jessie finds that the vibrancy of the colors and the beauty of the silk was the best way to satisfy her creative abilities. She’s fascinated by the mixing of colors and this is what lead her to interpret these subtleties of color in her work. The movement of color and the fluidity renders a feeling of freedom. It is an exciting experience to discover the intricacies of the reactions with the many varieties of silk, so different from canvas, which always reacts the same.


She pursued her dream of art, studying under various artists in Abu Dhabi, which has been her home for all her adult life. She has also been inspired by her multi-talented parents – a scientist and a math teacher who were also an author and an artist. She wanted to experience all that the art world had to offer in Abu Dhabi, so she learnt oil, gouache, watercolor, and later on silk.


Her paintings were exhibited at the cultural foundation, while she was a student there in the late 80s and later have been commissioned to do specific pieces by art lovers and as corporate gifts. Her home is a living gallery of her art and have been encouraged by the higher echelons of society to do an exhibition.

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