Peace of art

It doesn’t take too long for him to find any shade of paint, as he has different shelves allotted for each colour in his custom-made sideboard, which also stocks several other artistic tools, from cello tapes to ink colours, stencils and rulers. The brushes, meanwhile, are suspended on the adjacent wall and a computer is neatly placed on a corner table. “I don’t like to keep searching for things. I want them to be accessible,” smiles Pushkale.

He does not like to forget important things either, a testament to which are the small notes pinned on a board. “I often write pointers. This includes ideas that crop abruptly. At times, I make a rough sketch of the work on paper before I translate it on the canvas,” says the artist who shifted base from Bhopal to Delhi, 14 years back, on the insistence of artist Manjit Bawa. “I’m grateful to him and Syed Haider Raza for guiding me,” observes Pushkale, looking at a photograph of the Paris-based artist that finds place on his board, along with pictures of Dalai Lama, Frida Kahlo, J Swaminathan, Nirmal Verma and Paul Klee amidst others. “I look up to all these people,” adds Pushkale, who has notable books by some of these authors in the library room attached to the studio. “I often go there to rest,” he says.   

While the paperwork suspended on the wall acts as a reminder of the artist’s early oeuvre that was more figurative, they aren’t the only works of art in the huge hall which has some furniture designed by Pushkale. He seems most satisfied with the wooden chairs that double up as his palette. “The regular palettes are too small,” quips Pushkale. And as his 13-month-old Labrador, Bingo, comes running to him, the artist switches to a more playful mode, adding, “He is my companion in the studio. He sits here often while I work.”