JOIN USAmol Palekar began his career as a painter before venturing into films and the actor-director now has returned to his first love with a collection of abstract paintings in oil.
Palekar, who has bid adieu to acting, said he made a comeback to art because he wanted to explore 'silence' through his paintings, which are currently on display here for the first time at the Indian Habitat Centre.
"Any art form works towards abstraction. There are a couple of things I want to search through my paintings. The first being silence. I observed that silence is one of the most eloquent forms of sound. I have been trying to explore silence in theatre and films and now again here I am exploring it," Palekar told PTI.
The collection of 40 paintings, which took him a year to make bears his signature style, predominant white spaces. The exhibition is on till March 7.
"We are actually scared of silence. We have lost the beauty and strength of silence in today's fast pace life. It is missing somewhere. To me it's the most important somewhere, it is the pause and silence which give you the ultimate happiness," he said.
Renowned for his roles in films like "Gol Maal," and "Rajnigandha" the 70-year-old actor held his first solo exhibition in 1967.
"Till 1984, I had seven solo exhibitions. I have always done abstracts. Then there was a big gap of 30 years. But again last year I got back to painting with my solo show in Mumbai followed by other western cities," the JJ School of Art graduate said.
Palekar also pointed out that he switched to theatre and films, only to evolve as a painter.
"I have always been a painter in thoughts and spirits even when I kept dabbling in films and theatre. The painter in me was always predominant. Even my journey in theatre was always in the form of a visual artist. Similarly, when I started making films it was always from a painter's point of view," he said.
Palekar said he never struggled to strike a balance between the three medium of art forms -- painting, theatre and films -- because he felt there is a connect among the three.
"The problem which I could not solve in a painting, suddenly I solved in theatre or films. It has been very complimentary. I have had the privilege of dabbling in so many things," he said.
Though he has been dealing with paintings for a long, the actor recalls he struggled to draw the work titled 'Humanity' on a five feet by eight feet canvas that took him two months to complete.
"When I thought of doing this, I could visualise only it on a big scale. I ordered this huge canvas and when the canvas came I used to stand in front of it without doing anything.
"I told my wife Sandhya that I am getting scared. I told her that the questions which I start getting at the beginning, I might get stuck at the end without getting the solution. So, then I again started thinking with a different point of view," he added.
Palekar has dedicated the exhibition to the cause of the Bachpan Bachao Andolan and said the proceeds from the sale of paintings would to nonprofit headed by Nobel Laureate Kailash Satyarthi.
"People have bought most of my works," the actor-artist said.