About
Zubbin has long been driven by a passion for art history as well as contemporary art and his work reflects this desire through a unique painting style. Born in 1993, he is the first member of his family to become an artist and has not had any formal education in the arts, being self-taught – perhaps it is this that drives his art form. That said, he did study architecture in the UK at the Glasgow School of Art, where he enjoyed mixing with an international group of students and a variety of spoken English dialects and accents! He was able to travel to South America after this, and also in Asia.
His family come from the Kathmandu valley, with a family home in the Dhumbarahi area, close to the famous shrine. His father worked for Nepal Television and was one of the first to follow a career in the media – television did not come to the country until the 1980s. His mother is very active in community development, working for the Parcel for Peace NGO, where he too was a volunteer. Zubbin had an urge to be involved in the field of design, but his real direction was always art. He began to paint for a living from 2018 and has so far excelled in producing unusual contemporary art, working mainly in oil pastels.
His paintings are usually amalgams of many differing images, often added to by instinct where, as he implies, ‘the canvas almost answers back’. This ‘image followed by image’ approach works like a puzzle, where the pieces fall into place without there being a preconceived theme at the beginning. As with many artists, the ideas dwell in the abstract of the mind, flowing on to the canvas when the mood is positive, and the subject matter is derived from an innate sense within. Zubbin's latest series includes eight portraits, inspired by the earliest photographs of Nepal, using his own artistic licence to give the works a unique quality.
Zubbin’s art is on display at the KGH, where he has a studio selling to local as well as international collectors. He participated in a group exhibition in collaboration with Danfe Arts called ‘On Taking Flight’, which showcased his style, with amalgams of many different individual images. Some of these were actual letters that helped illustrate the theme of comparing evolving forms of communication from letter-writing to internet. The two-week display took almost three months to put together.
As for the future, Zubbin’s passion is to continue for now along the same lines with contemporary material, remaining self-sufficient and deeply drawn by, as he says, ‘mood-based’ creativity.
