Artist on himself
I was born in 1974 in Bangalore. My father was a bureaucrat and was not even remotely connected to art. Though I was interested in art from childhood, he never wanted me to take up art beyond a hobby.
Sri BR Panesar, veteran artist was a colleague of my father. He used to come quite often to our house and due to my acute interest in art, he invited me to a show of the famous Society of Contemporary Artists. For the first time I was seeing the art of famous Indian artists like Bikash Bhattacharya, Paritosh Sen and Ganesh Pyne and of course Panesar himself. I was thoroughly excited. Since then I would visit many exhibitions.
Ours was a middle class family and it was truly difficult for us to think of taking up painting as a profession. The art materials used to be very expensive and to take up a full-fledged course in any art college for three years was unthinkable. I respected my father’s feelings and took up Economics at Presidency College, Calcutta. Mr Panesar knew that I was willing to learn painting and he knew my constraints. But he always pacified me by saying that the greatest artists of all time like Picasso, Van Gogh, Gaugin, Tagore, MF Hussain and Souza were all self-taught. Art, he said cannot be taught. It has to come from within.
But I was too grown up to be pacified by such words. With whatever money I could earn, I had started learning many art-related activities. I took up short courses in ceramic pottery, ceramic grain painting, photography, water-colour. And Mr Panesar himself took interest in teaching me collage making.
It was during this time that I used to visit the Academy of Fine Arts regularly and the Government College of Art and crafts. I used to observe the students painting and sculpting. Both Academy and the Government College had very free atmosphere; Anybody could get into the classes anytime as long as one did not disturb the others. Academy had an added advantage of being close to the Nandan Cinema Hall. I used to go and buy a cinema ticket and then, in the ensuing time between two shows I would spend my time in the Academy.
I came to Delhi in 1993 to study Economics at JNU. Simultaneously I took up course in Graphic designing. I also learnt sculpting for some time.
In 1999, I got into government job and this in one shot erased all my financial constraints. Now I could buy big canvas rolls and make paintings of any size, and use colours without thinking much.
I do not paint however to make any social commentary. I paint for the sake of art and art alone. My style is also more an academic style that experiments with colour and form and their interdependence and influence on each other. Pseudorealism is quite new in India and even in cities like Delhi and Bombay people are not very aware of this exciting new style. But I can percieve a slow acceptance of the style and in course of time with increasing globalisation, I am sure more people would take it up.
Kerala Government Art portal
