PRAMOD GANAPATYE

A line does not have a life of its own. It gets life and autonomy when an artist like Pramod Ganapatye creates it. Then it begins to meander and create bends and curves like a stream flowing through a mountainous region. Out of its curves and bends emerge forms, sometime of men but mostly of women - generously endowed, sometimes even plump but always fecund, women who have never seen the inside of a beauty parlour. Who are these women? Where have they come from? Their source perhaps lies in the women of Malwa who religiously perform the Yatra of Panchakroshi, walking twenty one kilometres everyday for five days to have the darshan of Panch Mahadevas around Ujjain. Their wide eyed look, the texture of their bodies and the colour of their skins cannot be seen in real life. Perhaps the colours do exist in nature though we do not notice them and in any case Malwa is rich in colours. But the colours of these women in Ganapatye’s canvases have been created by him by applying layers and layers, of different colours that reflect through different layers and pierce each other to create new colours. That is how the lines and these women come alive in the oils of Pramod Ganapatye.

K.Bikram Singh
Art Critic & Film Maker