Ganesh Pyne (b. 1937)

Pyne admits to being an intensely private person and his human figures tend to be solitary introspective beings. In the current work the lonely figure of a blind girl stands with her arms outstretched, but the significance of her raised palms is ambiguous. It is unclear if she intends to explore the world around her or if her hands are rasied to defend herself from the world she cannot see.

Pyne started using tempera in the late 1960's.  Tempera is an opaque medium where pigment is mixed with a binding agent.  Pyne's early experiments with indigenous powder pigments and a variety of binding agents allowed him to develop a unique way of building up a textured surface that glows with points of light.  The current painting from 1973 is from this early period where there is an intensity to his work that is not always matched in his later images.  The artist states that tempera painting is a 'gradual process of growth,' these large detailed works taking many months to complete.