RINI DHUMAL (b.1948) Rini Dhumal was born in 1948 in West Bengal. She studied Painting at M.S.University, Baroda, where she started teaching and is today the head of the painting department at the Faculty of Fine Arts. Since 1974, Dhumal has held several solo exhibitions in India and abroad: Paris 1976, Vadivia, Chile 1985, Contemporary Art Gallery Ahmedabad 1985, Gallery 7 in Mumbai 1986-'88-'92 and 1995; in Delhi at Dhoomimal Art Gallery 1987; Centre for Contemporary Arts 1998; Art Today 1995; in Mumbai also at Cymroza 1997 and Sakshi Art Gallery; 1998 and at the Fine Art Trust 2001; at Gallerie Arts and Data Frankfurt, Germany 1990; In Madrid Spain in 1991; at Galerie Bnita Printz, Madrid, Spain 1995. In Madras at Sakshi Gallery 1992 and Apparao Gallery 1999. She has participated in several workshops and camps, national and international. She is also the recipient of several awards and grants. She lives and works in Baroda. STATEMENT I believe in art which speaks a universal language - which has a life of its own - one with a certain degree of permanence which portrays the feel and flow of life with all its coloured nuances and experience. A life lived to the full. A certain 'playfulness' permeates my works and portrays a deep inner psyche of the female, its joys, its traumas, the language is sensual, not merely cerebral. It has to have an instinctual relationship with nature and the world around us. The pictorial language of my works deals with myths and dreams -images from the real world and the subconscious with symbolic references - flying females which to me are associated with sexual desires, trees, fruits etc. The female is not dormant but vibrates a latent power.