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Travel has been an integral part of my childhood. As my father is a master mariner by profession, and both my parents are enthusiastic travelers, our otherwise settled lives were frequently punctuated by taking to the road or sea. As the sea journeys would sometimes extend for six to nine months, in the paucity of company of my own age, my free time on board was spent in exploring the ship, and the activities of painting, and later on, reading, became a part of my daily routine. Travel continues to be an important part of my life.

 

My family shifted to Goa when I was seven. I completed my Bachelors’ course in Painting at the Goa College of Art, after which I did a Masters course in Printmaking at the Faculty of Fine Arts, at the Maharaja Sayajirao University in Baroda. Towards the end of the course, I began working with multiple colours in silkscreen. Looking back, I feel that perhaps it was these silk-screens, where I was once again working with brushes and multiple colours, which were the prelude to my return to painting.  I now live and work in Baroda.

 

I enjoy looking at Persian and Mughul paintings, and Ben Shahn. The work of  Ben Shahn speaks so eloquently of the artist’s observations and concerns about the society and the world he lived in. I delight in the ethereal finesse of Persian and Mughul illuminations.

 

I work to know who I am, to ‘speak’ about it to myself, and then share it with others. When one says, ‘the painting never lies,’ it also becomes a mirror for oneself that one is quite grateful to have. What motivates me is – the hope to be able to sustain a connection with myself through my art, and forge a bond with what makes up the world around me, and the joy when I feel this has happened. Painting keeps me centered and prods me to find ways to come back to the truth. Looking at art is also what motivates me – seeing fabulous art is the most inspiring thing one can think of.

 

I filter through what I have read, heard and experienced in my daily life when I paint. This brings in environmental issues that I come across as a city dweller, like the loss of trees within the city. My paintings speak about loss and memory. In one way, they act as documents and touch stones for various remembrances that I carry with me as my personal history. I live in Baroda, in Gujarat, where the tension of rigid attitudes and opinions on the lines of religion is something that I think about on a daily basis. I enjoy the bustle of Barodaand Ahmedabad, but the enjoyment always comes along with the memory of the carnage that this state has witnessed. However, it is very rarely that I have directly referred to these situations and realities in my paintings.

 

My paintings are infused with the traditions of storytelling. Each work provides visual occurrences that invite the experiences of the viewer to bring to the paintings their personal mythologies, so that like a poetic map, the painting allows for each person to chart their own journey of experience within its territory as they travel in them.

 

I work with oil paint on canvas. I work in this medium because it has the possibility of allowing one to work with it in so many ways. I also work with water colour on paper and have been working in this medium in a way close to the opacity of gauche.

 

Reading allows me to travel in unique and infinitely varied ways which offer me inputs of perception that relate to life experiences; where ordinary objects also hold the potential to evoke through the way we choose to find associated meanings in them. My paintings often have the imagery of what I have read embedded in them. Attending plays and theatrical productions, or reading plays are similarly enriching. I was fortunate to be able to attend the plays of a wonderful theatre company called ‘The Mustard Seed Art Company,’ which produced plays from Shakespeare to their own scripted work, and the numerous concerts and performances by visiting troupes of artists, hosted by the Kala Academy in Goa.