THE MOON IN HIS POCKET

Pramod Ganapatye is an ardent admirer of modern Hindi poetry and likes the poetry of Sarveshwer Dayal Saxena for its sensitive graphic quality।

At one point he studied and painted the chromatic character of astrological signs। He was totally into abstraction in time and space.

While Reading Sarveshwar Dayal’s poems he would wonder about the justification for going abstract. Pramod became a seedling again and started afresh. The seedling struggled to open its seed leaves.

He wanted to come face to face with ‘Man and the complex environ’. He would often find, like Sarveshwar, ‘The moon in his pocket’. Sometimes he wondered why ‘The squirrel is eating the sun on the tree-top’. He soon dropped the indirect approach. Chromatic character of astrological signs and abstraction were left behind. He could clearly see ‘The night descending slowly on us, crawling like an ant’.

Pramod developed a hold on figuration. He is now whole-hog into recognisable elements. He found a haven in the direct simplicity of Malwa miniatures, which is his speciality. Visuals if life and nature, with all their complexity, captivate him. He is totally devoted to life and nature images. An honest person can not turn his back on life. He grapples with the complexity around him, the mundane as well as the disturbing pictorial elements of extreme significance. It is not a close and shut attitude and has immense possibilities for exploration.

The engraved linear drawing on the point-coated canvas is the beginning. The canvas experiences a presence. Then suddenly a burst of chroma occurs and patches of colour begin to appear. The canvas is activated with brilliant hues. The engraved line participates with various forms appearing in quick succession. A drama of color unfolds and engulfs the canvas. At first there it is chaos. Then some magic procedure brings in new light to the canvas. Chaos gives way to organization. Attachment to brilliant hues starts functioning hand in hand with the engraved drawing. A small area gets activated….images become functional.

Birds come and fly. The old wall clock chimes. White swing into the richly coloured spaces. Chrome yellow expands and occupies a large chunk of the pictures area. Flat application throbs. A lot of simple activity gets synchronized into a composition of beauty. The static and the kinetic intermingle.

As curator of the Rashtrapati Bhavan, Pramod has organized three museums. He has traveled extensively in India and abroad. Whatever he does, wherever he goes, he keeps his eyes open and his creativity alive. As a critic, Pramod has written about Indian Miniatures and interviews major Indian contemporary artists to probe their work and mind.
His experience in abstraction comes handy in his figurative poetry.

Umesh Verma
(Art Critic & Artist)