Overview

I started water-colours intermittently, in between oils paintings, while waiting for them to dry. What started on a small scale (both in size and in what I wanted to say) gradually became a grand obsession. Until then the only water colours I had done were during my first year at M S University in Baroda. Nor was I very conversant with the medium. However, initial hesitance gave way: I started messing around, throwing conventional ways of this medium out of the window. Instead of the usual washes of water I extensively used the element of line to articulate and to build up a work.

Water colours are even more demanding: you can’t rectify mistakes. Do you think that mistakes themselves can lead to new discoveries, as doodles can and have done for so many artists –including Rabindranath Tagore bringing up things from the “unconscious”