Sisir Sahana "We should not expect people to appreciate or buy art, this is the duty of an artist. An artist expresses feelings or imagination. We can't worry about who's not buying it. If we did, art wouldn't have developed so much to this point." Sisir Sahana was born in 1963 in Bankura, West Bengal. He studied art at Kala Bhavan, Shantiniketan, and holds a Bachelor's and Master's Fine Art Degree in painting. Sahana also holds an Advanced Diploma in stained glass painting from Central St. Martin's College of Art & Design, London (1994). Sisir Sahana is an artist well known for his glass sculptures or relief work in glass more than his other work like painting and graphic representation. Sahana mastered this unique avenue of expression whilst on fellowship and study trips to Europe and America, when he tried his hand at stained glass and later shifted to haptic glass friezes. In the laborious and technology intensive method Sahana employs, he creates everything from scratch, even the glass itself, first envisioning the composition and then casting it with different colours and textures like matt and glazed. He says that in India this kind of work is only possible in his workshop at the L V Prasad Eye Institute in Hyderabad, which he claims is the best in the country for making glass sculptures of the proportions he does (an amazing 122x28x10 inches). Sahana tells a unique story with these huge panel-like pieces, which are displayed frequently at galleries around the country and abroad. Their pictorial depictions consist mainly of images and scenes from nature or perceptive, caring and responsive human faces - a theme that has been preserved in his paintings and etchings as well. Sahana works with many mediums but as expected finds glass the easiest and most enjoyable means to express his art. His creativity in this field is quite unparalleled in the country, and anyone who visited his solo exhibition at the L V Prasad Eye Institute and saw his glass relief sculptures like "The Princess", "Open Eyes" and "A Moment of Time" would agree without hesitation. Recognition for this artist has come in the form of several awards, including honours like the "Samakalin Chitrakala Parishad" award in Assam, the "Bombay Art Society" award and the "Hyderabad Art Society" award. Although he has worked as a lecturer and art teacher in Hyderabad colleges and schools, Sahana now focuses all his energies on his art and glass-making workshop
