Originally born in India, lives and works in New York and California. Artist, Preet Srivastava questions personal and political identity by direct observation of human nature and form, vaticinations are immured on canvas.

The post discourse of our time finds itself steeped deep in contradiction. While technological advances in communication have allowed for global intimacy, we seem to have lost a real sense of "domesticity"- a core geography and way of life we call "home". On the one hand, we find individual significance through group identification with larger cultural categories such as race and gender. On the other hand these very categories dissolve our individualities. While international awareness allows us to understand the depth of systematic cultural oppression- the idea that we as a people are less than- the political scope of defeating western imperialism isolates us from our individual traits. We divert our individuality to support a wider political alliance. The result of retiring the intimate personal for the supra-political has been global networks along side fragmented individualities- a dichotomy of unity and disunity between political recognition and personal representation.

The paintings of Preet Srivastava have been the alliance between the political and personal. The paintings arise from concrete problems so they reveal their value in concrete applications.They possess a significance greater than their origins and a relevance wider than their original applications; It is that desire that constitutes the primordial why.

Occurence and content stand in immediate correlation with outer circumstance. A Figurative essence is directly observed and transformed from oil onto canvas. The works present a fortuitious perspective that allows us to transcend boundaries of past, present, and future of content. figure, herself, and the world we live in.

The ambiguity of her art bridges the personal with the political by allowing overlap of content necessary to wage the war against dominant paradigms while upholding the purity of personal identification. Amorphous boundaries of her artistic representation transcend the deeper mentality of cultural assumptions, providing a complete personality which identifies larger political struggles as well as personal stories- an identification which the artist herself has not fully comprehended - a spacious definition to self that she holds sacred- an infinite horizon of identity that Preet is simultaneously finding as well as pursuing. It is this pursuit of awakening that drives her, attracts the audience and answers the contradiction of the post-discourse.

"Its about investing in something you believe in. The power of art."

Preet Srivastava's paintings exhibit an impressionistic and expressionistic abstraction of the figure. She is trained by her Father, Sargent, Frida Kahlo, Basquiat, Vaikunttam, and Brian Blood in their expression of figure, landscape and emotion. She is inspired most by her Mother.

Writing: Bernard Lonergan and Alzo Slade. Copyright 1999 by Vikas Prasad Srivastava