Nitin Kakkar

Year of birth: 1978.
Where do you live: Burlington, MA, USA.
Your education: I studied art at Sarah Lawrence College and the Pacific Northwest College of Art.
Describe your art in three words: It’s like motorized.
Website | Instagram

Your work is deeply inspired by the transformative qualities of music. Can you share how music influences your creative process and the themes you explore in your paintings?

The work, in a very literal way, uses pigment and mark making as an allegory for the sonic experiences of music.  I am often, while painting, reflecting on the impressions musical passages have left on me and am attempting to emulate those visually. 

The themes explored are primarily emotional, which music is singularly predisposed to convey. One might say that music is where even our darkest and most perplexing emotions may find their glory and acquire their healing properties. I also try to explore themes of nature which primarily serve to orient, decorate, and exalt the emotional themes. 

Nitin Kakkar | RT1-S849 | 2023

You mention drawing inspiration from vintage electric musical instruments and sound equipment. What is it about these elements that resonates with you and drives your artistic expression?

The advent of electric musical instruments and sound equipment served to both elevate and disrupt the conventions and norms common in the evolving history of music.  I strive, as an artist, to mirror that impact, visually onto the lineage of abstract painting.  To put it simply, I want the excitement, exaggerated clarity, and wild expression that were ushered in by the emergence of electric musical instruments and sound equipment to drive my work.  

How do you approach layering and manipulating acrylic paint to reflect the complexity of musical expression? Could you describe your technique in more detail?

This is where my work is analogous with experimental and avant-garde music.  Without thinking too much, I apply paint, with my canvas on the floor, usually with an abundance of high-flow medium, using various dripping, scraping, and wiping techniques, and by tilting the canvas in different ways which readily renders the effect of the painting to that of experimental music.  I think most abstract painting touches on something musical; I have simply made this the ultimate focus of my work.  

Nitin Kakkar | A Shit Eating Grin for God and the Devil | 2005

Your work explores the intersection between the natural, contemporary, and post-contemporary worlds. How do you see music bridging these different temporalities?

The natural, contemporary, and post-contemporary world tend to bridge themselves.  Music, in many instances, cradles that bridge.  The natural world is omnipresent.  We cannot exist without water and air, so anything that engages, stimulates, or speaks directly to the senses invokes a poetic connection to the natural world.  Even a monotone rhythmic tapping of one piano key will either remind me of something in nature or make me feel distracted.  It will, perhaps, invoke something architectural or mathematical; but that, I have to say, does not directly influence my work.  

In terms of the contemporary and post-contemporary world, any veering away from tradition puts us in these temporalities to some effect.  Being completely rooted in tradition is the only way to avoid it entirely

How has your formal education at Sarah Lawrence College and the Pacific Northwest College of Art shaped your approach to abstract art?

To be honest, my formal education has done almost nothing to shape my approach to art or my practice in any way.  I, in some ways, even wonder, at times, to what effect I am trying to unlearn any curricular advice and direction I may have absorbed there.  Not to say it was a useless experience.  Studying art in a traditional sense has enriched my life and answered countless questions I had about art.  It has given my life a profundity and a deep sense of history and culture.  I can’t say that I’d trade it for anything. 

Nitin Kakkar | A-3R97F | 2020

Are there specific genres or eras of music that you feel have the most profound impact on your art?

Absolutely.  Since I was young I have spent many years focussed on one style of music or another.  I tend to gravitate, primarily, to one style of music at a time.  When my voice as a painter developed, I was devoutly engaged with garage and surf music from the 1950s and 1960s, and the subsequent emergence of British invasion music of the 1960s.  This was also a time in which I sought, rather naively I suppose, to unify people and harmonize souls through art.  The work, as a result, developed a sense of stylistic fusion.  I see my work as a fusion that is rooted in, or derived from, garage and surf music of the 1950s and 1960s.    

Your works appear to be visually dynamic, almost like they’re vibrating with sound. Do you aim to evoke specific sounds or musical experiences in your pieces?

I actually have tried to create a visual experience that references the cornerstones of early rock ‘n’ roll music.  Each piece has a reference to drums, electric bass, and electric guitar sounds.  A few of the pieces have pencil line smiley faces which not only reference the “peace and joy” philosophy of many of the bands of that era, but also suggest vocals.  What amuses me is that it, to some effect, did not work.  My paintings could just as easily be read as a visual representation of compositions for electric synthesizer.  This has proven to be a very workable and welcomed ego death.  I do plan on incorporating black backgrounds in the future to closer reference and pay homage to rock ‘n’ roll, but the white backgrounds, I imagine, will always amuse me and find purchase in my work.

Nitin Kakkar | KR-0292 | 2010