I loved Art Attack as a kid. Airing on Disney Channel, this was a British art & crafts show for kids featuring Neil Buchanan, who I'd follow into making my odd little projects that took up most of my evenings after school. On birthdays and anniversaries, I would also make my parents handmade greeting cards. Later, when my dad showed me his old Yashica, I took dozens of photos — of our dog, the neighbourhood street corners, and blurry sunrises, 'wasting' reels of film on imperfect frames, all of which my dad got developed.

And yet, I can’t pinpoint exactly when that playful, creative instinct became so daunting. Somewhere along the way, as I grew older, I became more aware of how I was being perceived — by others and by myself. Gradually, what had once felt like joyful experimentation became a high-stakes performance. I stopped making things and started studying the idea of making things. From Julia Cameron to Steven Pressfield and Elizabeth Gilbert to Rick Rubin, I read everything I could about the creative process — without actually creating anything.

Bursts of inspiration would come and go, just enough to stir some excitement, but never enough to hold me the way Neil once did. Art had become this behemoth; dense, overthought, intimidating. I stayed with that knot for a long time until I attended a workshop called 'Ways of Seeing'. In the period of 12 sessions that lasted 3 months, that constricted, tangled-up notion of art in my head began to unknot. I could breathe again.

Founded by artists Nitesh Mohanty and Sonal Choudhury under their PLORK school of thought that merges 'play' and 'work', the workshop is named after John Berger's seminal series and book 'Ways Of Seeing'. Nitesh came across the book in the late 90s as an MDes student at NID Ahmedabad and felt provoked, inspired, and awakened by his writings which largely challenged his notion of what seeing entails.

This layered space of perception is what the workshop invited us into. How do we look at something in the first place? What shapes that gaze? What are the filters, assumptions, or cultural codes already embedded in it? Instead of merely decoding the work of artists, the workshop looked at art as an ecosystem of dialogue and response. It spotlighted how artists respond, intentionally or otherwise, to what’s come before and what surrounds them, how ideas travel through people, through time, and through form, how one medium leaks into another. For me, it demystified art as this arcane and elusive thing that was accessible only to some.

That distance, I believe, was cut short in the way Nitesh & Sonal made art personal for us. We realised that to even begin understanding why we’re drawn to something we have to start from within — to trace the story of who we are, what moves us, and where our own personal histories meet the work we engage with. And as we explored art, design, photography, literature, and cinema, the 'seeing' became less about what was visible and more about how meaning is created — socially, emotionally, and intellectually.

One of my favourite things about the workshop was the time we spent with artists. We studied 'C’mon C’mon' by Mike Mills, and his cinematic language of depicting a child's volatile inner world. We watched 'Minamata' and dove into W. Eugene Smith’s photographs, understanding what it means to carry the weight of a subject beyond the moment of capture. We examined Van Gogh, beyond the myth and how he translated his loneliness, longing, and bursts of spiritual light into brushstrokes.

And as we did this, we began an excavation of our own. What stories shape us? What aches have we stored away? What compels us to make something, if anything at all? The question that had once seemed so overwhelming — 'What do I have to say?' turned into 'I do have something to say. Now how do I say it?'

Which got us into visual arts — a language of its own, that works in parallel to verbal language, and sometimes, against it. Nitesh calls visual cultures as something we fall back on for the gaps between how we feel and the way we describe feelings. In those spaces where language breaks down, we turn to images, gestures, frames, and forms. The artist, in that sense, becomes a translator of emotional and intuitive knowledge, and visual storytelling thus becomes a form of resistance saying, “There’s more to truth than what can be said," Nitesh notes.

This complexity in expression exists in the reception of it too. "Over time, artists such as Edvard Munch, Nasreen Mohamedi, Joan Mitchell, Tarkovsky, David Lynch, & Ernst Haas created work that demanded something more from the viewer," share Nitesh & Sonal. "They weren't interested in offering answers, instead allowing each viewer to sit uncomfortably with their doubts, ambiguities and dilemmas — compelling them to embrace the esoteric aspects of life and complex human emotions."

Something that became a consistent lens to look at art throughout the workshop was context. We examined this by engaging with artists whose work could only be understood by considering the worlds they emerged from. With Frida Kahlo, we looked at the ways her personal grief, physical trauma, and complicated love shaped her body of work. In Basquiat’s practice, we saw how the chaos of the New York art scene, racial injustice, and the insatiable gaze of white collectors framed what and how he painted, and who it was for. With Tucher Nichols, we learnt about gestures of care and support and art as a reaching hand of human connection in times of hardship and illness.

But while these conditions inform the practice of the artists within them, it isn't the subject of their art. This is what Paul Cézanne meant when he wrote, “I want to render what I experience with my eyes, but in a way that is truer than truth.” He wasn't interested in the world he saw, but the one he felt after it filtered through his consciousness, his memory, and his inner emotional life.

This distinction often separates art that resonates with us from the one that feels inauthentic or dull. American poet and essayist, Rita Dove, has called it out as well. “Bad confessional poetry has always raised my hackles, because it goes skewering in deep, exclaiming, Ooh, look at all this blood! But I'm like, 'No one's interested in your blood.' Make me bleed as I'm reading.” There's something to say here about emotional resonance that can only come from a place of truth.

How does one access that truth though? If emotion is at the centre of creation, do we just wait till we feel something? I did that and I ended up waiting a long time for 'inspiration' to strike. So did Nitesh. "When I was young, I was rather self-indulgent to believe that artists need time to create and design is often born out of contemplation (along with countless cups of chai) but that’s such an outdated concept," he shares. "Procrastination is like a rocking chair, you imagine it’s taking you somewhere but leads you nowhere. So where does one find the inertia to make…? With time I learnt, discipline is cool and nothing gets made without your willingness to fail."

The assignments we got at the workshop, which were called 'Thingamajigs' just to get that weight and intimidation off the word, became the harmless prompts that demanded a creative response from us. They neutralised the paralysis of freedom many artists experience when faced with the blank page infront of them.

"Contrary to popular belief, creative ideas emerge more efficiently within boundaries and parameters. There’s a myth that we need freedom to create. That just leads to overthinking and aimless meanderings," Nitesh insists. "But if I throw you inside a box with limited tools along with a few parameters to consider, there are more chances that you’ll resist less and create out of the stimuli."

When all was said and done, it was time to debunk the myth of 'The Artist' who retreats to a cottage in the woods to complete his novel. As we look back at history, we are consistently discovering all the people around the greatest minds who played a role in their lives and allowed them the space to create. Much of this is the invisible labour of women, maids, slaves even, who did the menial housework so that the thinkers could have the time to, well, think. Solitude may be a fertile ground for creativity but it is also something people in our lives facilitate for us. This relationality is something that Sonal & Nitesh reminded us of throughout the workshop.

As two artists who share a home, workspace, and most importantly time, Sonal points how it's difficult for her and Nitesh to separate themselves from each other. They're both deeply dependent on each other and are constantly observing and inquiring into each other’s journey, sharing inspiration and having the dialogues required to be able to nurture their individual practices. Witnessing them has been another lesson in how art doesn’t emerge from a vacuum of genius, but from a network of trust, listening, and mutual regard; an infrastructure of care.

So one could argue that I have a camera today because of all those reels of film my dad paid for to be developed even though he knew they weren't all worth it. And in that faith, I've found more reason to get back to photography than any shiny new concept that attacks my mind at 3 AM.

When you wash away all the self doubt and fear of judgement when it comes to creating art, what remains is an essential and innocent desire to say, "I was here and this is how I felt". And of all the things I learnt to see through this workshop, the most precious one was the clear, open road between the art and the artist within me.

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