Travelling Colours

“It is every artist’s dream to visit Venice to paint its beautiful landscape,” says Kalidas Deshpande,who claims to be an artist by passion and not profession. Retiring from his professor’s job at Garware College three years ago,Deshpande decided to utilise his free time to pursue his hobbies of painting and travelling. An untitled exhibition of his paintings on display at Malaka Spice is a coming together of both these hobbies.

His paintings depict the various places he visited in Canada,Switzerland,Kerala and Konkan over a span of six to eight years. “All my life,I have worked hard as the breadwinner for my family. Now that I have free time,I travel. I always carry my painting equipment and camera. Whenever I see something I would want to paint,I take a photograph and make a rough sketch on the spot to work on it later when I get back to my studio,” says the 60-year-old.

Along side the painting of Venice,hangs another true-to-life painting of yellow flowering trees as dried leaves carpet the ground. Couples occupy a bench or two scattered across the canvas while the others remain vacant. A sense of peace and calm overcomes those gazing the picturesque scene. Not very far from this frame is one with a different appeal. The details are not very clear with a man walking though fog on a lonely road in Kerala. “I visited Kerala eight years ago with my wife. A friend had suggested that we go and visit a hill station nearby. This one is the view of that place while we were out for a walk and looked back to see the road suddenly filled with fog,” recalls Deshpande.

The transformation in the style of his paintings came about when he attended a painting workshop by an artist in Murud about two years ago. His style involves painting on a dry canvas with water colours. “The artist these days have a wet-wet process of painting. They wet the canvas and paint with water colour,so the colours smudge and the details are not clear at all. But I prefer to keep the canvas dry,so each stroke is starkly visible,” he says.

He says that he also used to make pencil portraits of popular personalities during school days. His portraits of Stalin and John F Kennedy were much appreciated by his teachers and peers.