‘Multiple faiths worked well for me’

Early influences included Surendranagar in Gujarat,his home and Sheikh presents images of his school,college and the shrines there. A chief source of his pictorial imagery is poetry— not just verse,but all the sense impressions,the tales he heard and the myths he grew up with. “I read the namaz five times a day and studied Sanskrit at school,went to the mosque with my father in the morning and spent time with the temple priest in the evenings. The multiple faiths worked well for me.”

“Painting comes from poetry,literature and more importantly nowhere,” Sheikh said. For him,Baroda,where he did his Masters in Painting,opened hundreds of windows and made him search for a singular image,much like the horse that recurs in

M.F. Husain. There came a point in time when it seemed cinema was all-prevailing and art,especially painting,would be lost. “Then,I came across the art work of Siena,where they painted with such love,patience and tenderness and the love of painting revived,” he added.

Sheikh paints on varied formats,bringing to fore the world he knows,views and seeks. Interestingly,he often takes recourse to images from Google Earth,working his brush to create new horizons. He throws light on life’s colours,complexities and contradictions,juxtaposing the past and the present. Mystery and realism combine to give his paintings a dynamic quality and dialogue forms an integral part of his works.

The pain of the ethnic divide,the Emergency and incidents of terror are wounds that keep informing his works. “There came a time when every time I would pick up my brush to paint,there would be a terror attack. I hope we can go back to the time when we all co-existed in spite of the diversity of faiths,ideologies and attitudes,” he said.