Visit with Padma Rajendran

In advance of her two-person show Over Order, Padma Rajendran takes us behind the scenes in her Catskill studio.

Reminiscent of global folk art traditions, Padma’s paintings address her own observations and contradictory feelings towards home, homecoming, and homeland. Using resist and dye, Padma creates painterly drawings on shaped and sewn silk, encoding the cloth with adornment, symbols, and scenes that reflect on immigrant storytelling, womanhood, and the concept of home as a tended space.

This new series of more distinctly shaped silk paintings captures the cacophony of daily life and the tangle of elements that are a part of time, memory, and the body. Repeating motifs and imagery speak to the function of textile structures and ideas of narrative.

Padma Rajendran

Unfolding in vivid tones of magenta, indigo, and burnt orange, Padma’s work engages with the symbolism of fruitfulness as it relates to the female body, and personal translations of shrines and monuments. Padma uses the ubiquity of textiles as a tool to communicate identity, place, and personal narrative.

Shape and material are informing the imagery and multitude of layers that come from the resist drawing and how lighter dye colors build and blend. I am excited about how these layers provide atmosphere and define the imagery and pattern.

Padma Rajendran