Brush with the gossamer

There's an `unbearable lightness of being' in air at Gallery 7 these days.The walls here stand touched to encounters that painting is for ...

There’s an `unbearable lightness of being’ in air at Gallery 7 these days.The walls here stand touched to encounters that painting is for V K Wankhedeand Sheetal Gattani.

Wankehede, meanders along his muse in fabric, which is sometimes even thewhite bandage, and gets to leave a feel of the `animated, bright’. Sheetal’spaintings, with a stark earthiness bordering on nothingness, can leave youall brow-knotted. The reactions beginning with `what is this?’ do evolveinto taking in the formlessness, once you chat her up. "I love breakingatomic forms, stark reds, purples, blues, yellows.."

It is those layers of water colour that finally lead her to the earthyfinish. And how does she know the painting’s done? "It seduces. It talks.It’s a relationship. And in any case, it’s a creation that was meant to be,I just happened to be the tool. When it was being done, that was the momentof wholeness, without being aware of it. Which, of course, has seeds in acontrived effort of sitting down, letting go of the palette, the brush andyou," she says. So how much sense does studying art make then? "Learningmust precede unlearning," asserts this teacher of art at Convent of Jesusand Mary, adding "My value system springs from my college — JJ School ofArt." The rest of her comes to and from her muse.

"It’s a give-and-take. I give my impressions to it, I get my expressions andeven identity. Like, my painting introduced me to the being that I am in asocial context." Not to miss the feedback, all sorts, that has begun tomatter. "Especially my artist friends’ as much as the ones who know nothingabout art." It, after all, is about feeling. The blue, grey, black hues ofnothingness blending with the colourness of them all. Mostly towards a blackshe loves and that gives her the feel of `lightness’ while moving towardsit.

— BALPREET