Colour Me Offbeat

At his classy apartment in Aundh is Ashish Kate. He is in the throes of painting,an elaborate piece of striking tone and shade in a medium rarely heard before.

Welcome to the world of the offbeat. These artists have pursued creative perfection beyond the conventional realms. A new trend has dawned on the city – artists are furiously experimenting to shunt out the mundane.

Ten years back,when Shinde was working on one of his projects,he tried to use onion peel as a substitute to a shade that was missing. “The onion shade matched my imagination perfectly. I just stuck to it.” Today,Shinde has 45 paintings ready for his next exhibition,all made of peels and no colours. When a particular shade doesn’t match up,Shinde roasts or powders the peels. His exhibition starts on March 12 at the Bal Gandharava Art Gallery.

On a daily basis,Ashish Kate balances his writing with his painting using shoe polish. The ‘polishwala’ has in the past exhibited his ‘Viva la shoepolish’ range to much adulation. Eight years and 400 paintings later,Kate continues to play with a wide variety of objects,right from fingers to polish brushes to even leaves. “I have always wanted to be true to the technique so I mostly use shoe polish brushes. Although I do use a lot of other material to express myself in the best possible way.”

One can compare this trend to perhaps the evolution of Indian art itself. The 1990s saw Indian artists’ experimentation with various art forms. The mediums diversified to embrace ceramics,murals,vegetables,et al. Umakanth Oak picked up his own instrument of innovation. The 91-year-old artist’s room is filled with dark brown hued wooden portraits. Oak started learning pyrography at the age of 58. He jovially passes on a book-sized portrait of his wife. “What I normally do is sketch and then,using my burner,complete the portrait.” Apart from wood burning,Oak has experimented a lot with wood. The grain knot design that Oak works on,as the name suggests,uses the knots that are present naturally on wood to make life-sized portraits.

These ideas herald a fresh perspective and,in effect,the next level of art in the city.