We recently spoke with artist, musician, and story teller Amrita Sen, about her latest book and soundtrack Cosmic and Eternal Love: An Everlasting Love Story.
Full of amazing illustrations (that you can colour because it is a colouring book!), and poetry, this book is Amrita’s reinterpretation of a famous Indian mythology. “There is a great mythology about the divine love between the Blue God Krishna and the village girl Radha,” Amrita explains. “It has historically been told from the perspective of Krishna being the god. I thought it could use a reinterpretation finally – where Radha becomes the Goddess and Krishna becomes an ordinary man. This is the story of Cosmic and Eternal Love.”
In addition to writing and illustrating the book, she also wrote, performed and produced the music CD that brings the story to life. “I write the story, and re-write and re-write until I feel the characters are alive. Then I write the song lyrics from their perspective. It helps me to put melodies to the lyrics, and subsequently illustrate these melodies. Each song lyric and melody gets about six to seven pages, yielding about 70 pages of illustrations,” Amrita shares. “ I draw these illustrations by hand. It starts with pencil sketches. Then I retrace it with a marker. Then I vectorize these marker drawings in illustrator. Finally, I collage the artwork in Photoshop and ultimately do the full layout in InDesign.”
Amrita dedicated one year to creating this masterpiece and she’s ready to do it again with another book and soundtrack called Awakened, the story of Buddha’s wife.
After performing along the famous Indian composer A.R. Rahman at the Oscars in 2009, Amrita Sen had two choices to make. She could take her 15 minutes of fame and use it to launch a creative life, or go back to her job of representing famous celebrities and brands. Be the one in the spotlight or support the ones in the spotlight. She decided to be in the spotlight. Within two years she had already gone back to professional singing and was working with Timbaland on Justin Timberlake’s album. She also had a major art exhibit at Art Basel and distributed a bag line in department stores. This is Amrita Sen’s story. Don't let anyone tell you it's too late for you to choose the dream you’ve always wanted.
