Aryka Fyzee is an artist based in Mumbai and Goa. She studied at the Slade school of Fine art in London and graduated in 2015 with first class honours. She then returned to India and spent her following years focusing on developing her technique, and experimenting with different themes and the scale of her paintings. Aryka gains her inspiration from an eclectic mix of interests such as poetry, the natural world/ wilderness, interiors of architectural spaces, and ancient philosophies, all of which spill into her work. Consequently, contrasts play a crucial role in achieving the visual and psychological impact she desires to create from her work. 

Much of Aryka’s childhood was spent on a farm in Southern India with frequent trips exploring India’s nature reserves, and this had a lasting impact on the current subject matter she often chooses to paint. Hence the natural world is a theme that she explores with great joy in her paintings. 

The years she spent in Mumbai and London later served as a complete contrast to those spent in nature earlier, and urban life also brought lasting strong impressions that is evident in her current work. Upon returning from London after her degree, she studied yoga and Samkhya philosophy at the Yoga Institute in Santacruz in Mumbai. Here the studies of abstract concepts such as the principles of dualism between spirit and matter, and nature and identity, informed her subsequent artistic explorations. Consequently, she focuses on making her subject matter layered and very open to interpretation, playing with pictorial space, depth, flatness, proportion, light, shadow and colour, as a means to creating new interpretations of space and disorienting perspectives. 

Ultimately, through the illusory effects within her work, she aims to bring a sense of mystery for the viewer while still leaving just enough cues for one to feel an uncanny sense of familiarity towards the piece. 

Aryka Fyzee is currently working on a new body of work will be having a solo exhibition at the Jehangir art gallery in August from the 22nd to 28th this year.