Memoirs in monotone

Excerpts:

Q: What is making you see the world in black and white?

When I first started painting, I used to work in black and white (B &W). But those were small works and that was 32 years ago. The 1994 retrospective show which featured 30 years of my work had some of those early works. B &W is very much part of my repertoire.

But how I came back to B & W is a long story. The idea came to me while I was on my first ever trip to Europe, some four years ago. I had been invited to the German city of Bayruth which was celebrating 800 years. There, for the first time, I had the opportunity to see the original works of some great artists whom I have admired all along — Clemente, Picasso, Paul Klee and others.

Then, quite accidentally, I came upon the works of a young German artist called A R Penck. For me it was an amazing experience. His work is so much like mine! The same childlike approach, the same splashes of paint, uneven lines. And he had some huge B & W works. I thought to myself, `Let me also try’.

Q: Since it seems to be quite a direct influence, did you start off immediately?

Right after my return I was scheduled to attend an artists’ camp in Benaras. Away from housework, at a camp, you get more time and space to concentrate. So I restarted my B & W work in the Benaras camp.

But it would be wrong to pin it entirely on my Europe trip. Specially as I have drawn a lot from my visits to Orissa and Badrinath. In both places we were staying at guesthouses set amidst the hills. The hills have such human shapes — they seem to be sitting, bending, sleeping. On the way to Badrinath, there are two hills that look like a well sculpted mother-and-child composition. Nature is a great sculptor!

And these places are so full of legends. Every tilla, every temple, every slab of stone seemed to have a story behind it. Those local legends and the 1,000 steps that I climbed to reach a temple atop a hill gets space in these paintings.

Q: There was always a sense of joy and a dreamlike quality in your earlier works.

That’s because I grew up in a village. In those 22 years in Sanjaya (in Gujarat) — my village — I was a happy child, fond of colourful festivals and marriages. When I started painting it all came into my work.

The village is a wholly different world, every interaction has a human touch — you are even friendly with the neighbourhood dog and the birds in your courtyard. I am not claiming that my childhood was unblemished, but I had a fair share of good and bad days. And when you’re a child complications don’t affect you so much…

Q:Your village-inspired imagery has been replaced by isolated motifs of city architecture. Do you feel the black-and-white medium only lends itself to a serious theme?

I never plan my canvas. It changes as it grows. Things I have seen, stories I heard and remember and my mental state at the time of work all comes into play. Something very unfortunate happened while I was working on the triptych. My youngest sister’s husband had a very bad accident. I poured all my anxiety and tension into the canvas. But even that is not all. I suppose, for an artist there is no isolated event. It is a combination of things.

The black in the triptych is the darkness of the night. On our way to Badrinath, at Joshi Maat, I had a strange experience. The Joshi Maat sunset is a famous spectacle. Thousands gather to see it. One moment the sky is flooded with bright colours and the next moment is so dark, that you cannot see the person standing by your side. That colour of darkness refuses to leave me.