Gawrav Sinha 1972 -   Gawrav Sinha was born on April 7, 1972 into a highly artistic family in Patna, India. His father, Ram Anuj Sinha, was a respected art teacher and later photographer and his mother, Leela Sinha, taught classical dance and was a talented, self-taught painter. These fortuitous circumstances prompted Gawrav’s artistic explorations at an early age in both painting and photography. In fact, for Gawrav, creating art and photography came to be a part of life as natural as breathing.  His talents shone throughout his school years, 1979 to 1991, as he won painting competitions year after year. By 1984, discovering rhythm not only in art, Gawrav was also studying tabla and by 1986 received a diploma with distinction in music.  In 1992, Gawrav enrolled in the College of Art and Crafts, Patna, in order to continue developing his art studies.   While at college, Gawrav met a friend of his father’s, Dr. Barun Kumar Sinha, a noted neuro-surgeon and prize-winning wildlife photographer. Dr. Sinha encouraged Gawrav’s photographic development not only lending his camera, but offering Gawrav counsel, knowledge, and financial support in his endeavors. This influence continues to play a major part in Gawrav’s all round artistic development combining painting and photography.  After only two years of the five-year course at the College of Art and Crafts, perceiving the level of his talent, the college principal advised Gawrav that he could learn nothing further from the college and encouraged him to seek other avenues of learning.   With ideas of his own, Gawrav decided that the best route was to seek employment while continuing his habit of self-studies started in the British Library while at college.  Moving to Delhi in 1995, Gawrav began work as a graphic designer and, outside of this, continued to develop innovative ways to use his photography combined with his art. Along the way, he started an Adobe Photoshop Training Center conducting advanced courses in Photoshop and CorelDraw over a period of two years and designed and published a popular youth magazine. In 2006, Gawrav formed his own creative agency, Anantaksh, through which he continues to offer his graphic design and photographic services.   Parallel to his working life, in 2001, a personal crisis led to deep questions about the meaning of life. Looking for answers, Gawrav embarked on a journey to explore the wisdom and mysticism of Vedic philosophy, one of the world’s great teachings. Following a time-honoured tradition, he sought the counsel of two respected spiritual guides well-versed in this area.  The effect was deeply transformative. Gawrav came to see his artist’s life as a channel to express, through visual means, the search for knowledge and truth that can connect us to our deeper selves.  Through his many-faceted mystical studies, Gawrav arrived at an essential understanding of the three fundamental operating principles of the universe – creation, preservation and destruction. Understanding providing inspiration, Gawrav found the method of artistic expression he was searching for: Art Incantations. Pioneering his unique concept within the world of contemporary art today, his initial artworks are intense, energetic abstract paintings that are spiritual expressions of the continuous act of creation that works through our individual and collective consciousness.   In his inaugural works, Gawrav uses three primary colors: yellow, red and blue that portray creation, preservation and destruction consecutively. In Tantric understanding, these colors reside in a state of perfect balance within the divine consciousness from where we descend. When the balance is disturbed, the process of creation begins and beings come into existence possessing these colors in different proportions. Apart from their aesthetic value, his works of art are then an invitation to the viewer to experience this process by meditating on the colors and forms, to feel and explore the qualities of each and to allow the experience of their creative interaction to play in the limitless space of the mind and heart.   Creation of his Art Incantations begins two hours before sunrise when the qualities of time are most conducive to the creative process. This is the time when the energy of the dark, receptive womb of night begins its journey to embrace the light, and radiant energy of the early morning. A conception takes place and a new day is born. Likewise, Gawrav offers himself in a devotional act through ritual, purification and incantation to the pure, white deity of his canvas. He becomes one with his art as night moves to day. A rhythm created with line, color and shape flows onto the canvas until the new creation is born and transcendence over the concreteness of maya shines through in the abstract forms.  With his Art Incantations and through the power of abstraction, Gawrav seeks to draw back the veil of maya – illusion, fear, desire – and release the viewer's mind from concrete things to experience that radiance which is the light of our consciousness free from maya. Freed by a moment of aesthetic arrest, the mind has a chance to glimpse that eternal love and unity that lies beyond the world of material objects and separate egos. In "tasting" a moment such as this, it is Gawrav’s hope to inspire the beholder to find their own mystical journey towards the perfection of themselves.  Gawrav continues to explore new horizons with which to engage his viewers in the future through his Art Incantations, peering ever deeper into the cosmic processes of which we are all a part.
Art and photographic awards and participations:
1993  - st prize winner, Art Exhibition and Competition, College of Arts and Crafts, Patna, Bihar
 - Award winner, painting competition conducted by SAVE International, Patna to promote nature conservation
 - Participation in Group Art Exhibition held by Youth Mobilization for National Advancement, Patna

1994 - Best Still Life Award, color print section; Silver Medal, color slide section; and other Acceptances, photographic exhibition for the fifth All India Salon of Photography, Patna, Bihar

1995 - Acceptances, photographic exhibition, All India Salon of Photography by Image Palakkad, Kerala.
 - 2nd prize, pictorial color print section; 3rd prize, pictorial monochrome section in Photographic Competition and Exhibition conducted by Bihar Lalit Kala Academy, Patna Museum on the occasion of the inauguration of a dedicated art gallery space within the museum.