Pursuing the heart's desire

Creative calling

When his younger son bought back packs of crayons from a trip to Belgium six years ago, retired businessman Sailesh Sanghvi got a chance to rekindle his school days’ love for the arts. “The unattended colours and paper brought in by my younger son were lying in the basement (where currently I have my studio). Those unattended colours inspired me to start this journey again,” says the 62-year-old artist.

Once the journey started, the active businessman put all his current activities of
business to a back-burner and pursued his passion. As a self-taught artist, he shared his works with close friends and family who wanted himto share it with a wider
audience.

Eventually, he started following the art world closely within India and other countries. Though he has been exhibiting his artworks privately and in group expositions, the ongoing series of exhibition collages titled ‘The Moving Carnival of Folk’ and abstract paintings titled ‘Penumbra’ at Lalit Kala Akademi, are his first major solo. 

“After going through lakhs of works by master artists and extensive travel to art museums across the world, I wanted to do something different and not stick to the standard oil, acrylic or mix media works,” describes Sanghvi referring to his canvas collages which “celebrate the rich diversity of the nation”.

Through the unique medium of acrylic canvas collages, he tries to portray the life
style of a rural and small town milieu which is “chaotic yet happy”.

While he depicts the chequered shirt of one and a handkerchief tied around the wrist of another, among the “loafers” gathered around to bet on a cock fight; jeans-clad girls with long black open hair, in the abstract paintings in ‘Penumbra’, he takes inspiration from nature and the changing seasons.

“Along with working on what my country has to offer – folk traditions and region-specific stories and tales in one series including a work depicting the flowers market in Shillong titled ‘Fragrant square’, I  tried to explore the concept of shadows foraying into the spiritual and the energy source of the cosmos in the other,” he says.

 “I look at my own journey of introspection and self awareness while posing the question of finding one’s true potential as a human being,” adds the artist.

The series of exhibition is on till January 1, 2016.