ART IS

Art is not logic nor idea.

It is not to see, to smell, to hear and to know properly.

It can be the dialogue between knowing and not knowing, the wave between tone and sound.

It can be the distance between sight and understanding the space between two words.

Art could be light.

The light that creates light remaining within light, it cannot be thought, nor can it be seen before it occurs.

It is, what it is.

The key to the secret of existence.

Art is the present.

UNRAVELING THE LINE

The first thing that strikes you when you see ganapatye drawing is that his line meanders but never wavers.This quivering line seems to vibrate with akind of expressionistic restlessness that only a refined draftsman can achieve. Slowly, an amoebic form starts to inhabit the paper. Within the contours of the line,the shifting appearance of the figure manifests itself.The figure classically occupies center stage.

The line continues on its hypnotic journey creating folds of flesh interspersed with layers of the lyrical. the woman is invested with inner strength even in her loneliness.

Ganapatye's endless exploration of his subject has few parallels. The volume of work that he has produced over the years is characteristic of his approach towards the subject of his obsession. He repeats and investigates contnuously.His refined draftsmanship allows his figures to express a sense of ease and appreciation for the quiet interludes of daily life.The form, even when it is pulsates to the rhythms of some inner emotion.The knobby and weighty limbs are nevertheless able to convey gestures that are graceful. And when the form springs into a stride the agile line invests the figure with animal strength.

Naozar Daruwalla

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

An ode to rustic beauty

Sometimes, it takes a radical eye to instill visual splendour in a commonplace setting. Artist Pramod Ganapatye does just that with his Women of Malwa.

His works feature in the President’s repertoire. He sells for upwards of Rs 1 lakh.And the subject matter of his palette? Women of Malwa. Not queens, courtesans or dancers. But ordinary, village women, often in drab, shapeless clothes. Always depicted with a certain grandeur, a heroic aura reminiscent of ancient Mauryan or Gupta art.
Meet Pramod Ganapatye. Artist, one-time Keeper of the Arts for the President, and art scholar, all rolled into one. Ganapatye is one of those rare artists who blend visual expression with accurate historical representation. It is an intellectual concern arising from being steeped in the ethos of his native Malwa, home to a rich and continual tradition of the arts. And that gives his work a fluid consistency and depth stemming from his assured knowledge of the evolution of India’s visual art forms from over the centuries.
Born in Dewas, Madhya Pradesh, Ganapatye did his Masters in ancient history, culture and archaeology from Vikram University, Ujjain before moving to M S University, Baroda to snap up another masters, this time in Museology. A consummate artist, Ganapatye has also penned a book, ‘Guide to Indian Miniatures’, which was published by the Indian Museum in 1994.
Ganapatye has, over the years, moved from colourful non-figurative works based on astrological principles to linear non-figurative works. He then dabbled in figurative conversational narratives, and is now experimenting with a powerful iconography based on the forms of the peasant women of Malwa. They are the village women one comes across all over central India, depicted as few have done in the world of art. Their heavy bodies are often draped in flowing garments, which he renders in flat colours, giving them a peculiar contemporaneity of style. Perhaps, his time at the National Museum was well spent and has served him well in this respect.
In my view, his latest ‘Women of Malwa’ series of paintings has been a quantum leap in his development as an artist of pedigree. It has allowed for his understanding of our ancient imperial art to get just that blend of linearity. And the flat, pure hues remind one of what our miniature painters used to great advantage to transfigure the female form into an aesthetic exercise beyond all dictates of voyeurism. Of course, the connoisseurs of his art are very many. His works form the collections of the Sahitya Kala Parishad, Madhya Pradesh Kala Parishad, the Orissa State Academy at Bhubaneswar, the Chandigarh Museum and a number of noted private collectors in India and abroad.
I believe his ongoing series marks him out as among one of our most promising artists in the coming decade. As one of his early buyers, at Rs 2,000 per canvas, in the early Eighties, I find his current price tag of Rs 3 lakh and above a heartening one. The demand for his work is growing and I expect him to join the list of those selling in six and seven figures over the next couple of years. That’s why he merits inclusion in the list of artists worth investing in.
Suneet Chopra - Art Critic & Writer

consciousness, in it self is nothing one is always conscious about some thing,so the 'about' is important. consciousness is always objective; you are conscious of something. if there is nothing in front of you, cosciousness will drop, you will not be conscious.
when there is no object to be known, the knower is lost when all objects have dropped outside,then consciousness drops,and you become ampty space.

Dreaming can never be in the present, to be in the present and to be in the dream is impossible,they never meet. so one is awake,aware,attentive of the time that is just here and now, dream stops. and when dreaming withers aways, you can become aware, you can really become awake.

hope is one of the greatest barriers, because through hope dreams are created,through hope future is created, through hope time exsist. be here and now. if you hope, you have moved away from the here now.