Brush with simplicity

Amarjot Kaur

From pen and ink drawings to oil on canvas and now, Delhi-based artist, Kalicharan Gupta takes to acrylic, a medium, which he says is quite easy and convenient to work with. As he talks quite passionately about his life and career in painting, shooting for a YouTube video, just a few hours before a slide presentation on Myths of Metropolis organised by Chandigarh Lalit Kala Akademi, we wait quietly, observing his understated dressing that he carries off with far less enthusiasm, sparing most of it for his paintings. If the contrast in his disposition surprises you, the intensity of his expression and the vocabulary of his creative technique will amaze you. However, Kalicharan, focused on the video interview, cares very little of eavesdroppers (perhaps, it’s the sign of a secure and honest man)

“I started off with drawings and later started painting the oppressed sections of our society, especially the economically weaker sections of the society,” says Kalicharan. Though his choice of subjects that he paints borrows heavily from his own course of life and experiences that it had to offer, one assumes that the sensitivity with which he paints the impoverished in our country comes more from his understanding of small villages, for he was born in one. “I was born in Mohna, a small village in Faridabad and the only access we had to the outer world back then (during the 60s) was a radio set that my father owned. However, I went through my fair share of struggle after I did a bachelor’s course in art and craft teaching at Jamia Millia Islamia. I wanted to study further and enrol for a master’s degree in Delhi College of Arts, but my father had shortage of funds and I was working during the day as a cashier and attending college in the evening,” shares Kalicharan.

Painting mostly abstract, Kalicharan says that he only paints what he feels. “When I started painting figurative abstract, my subjects were mainly the downtrodden and their problems. However, later I started painting tribal art and how it is penetrating into contemporary work. Now, I paint cities and urban spaces, mainly highlighting the problems of the metros,” he adds. As one may imagine it is quite fashionable for an artist to use complex techniques, Kalicharan’s simplicity looks beyond the complicated and dares to break into final expressions that do not need to be filtered through a blueprint. His paintings are not just aesthetically appealing, they also breathe through the thinking spaces of your mind. “I don’t draw before I paint. Neither do I use scales, nor do I use charcoals. I drop the colour and get straight to the task,” he says.

[email protected]