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“Art enables us to find ourselves and lose ourselves at the same time.”
— Thomas Merton
As artists, influence is a potent formula that many spend their lives trying to crack; yet, it’s those who are ultimately after a larger purpose that eventually end up attaining it. Always on the prowl as we are for meaningful creative work coming out of the country, we decided to ask some interesting contemporary Indian artists to cast a look back at their visual journeys thus far, and recount the various elements and aesthetics that went into it to zero in on one ‘artwork’ that was truly impactful for them in their lives.
No mean feat, certainly. Especially because there’s no one-size-fits-all formula for a masterpiece. Different people enjoy, engage with, and remember different things about the same pieces of art. And art itself takes so many different forms—-childlike illustrations, massive installations, paint-to-paper and so much more. This makes ‘art’ the most subjective game of them all.
Previously, we’ve compiled stories in which photographers and musicians shared a piece of work from their respective fields that impacted them, touched them, even inspired them. This time, we’re going one level deeper—to a more primal zone where we’ve stripped down to the basics, and consulted those with paint on their hands and ink on their clothes. Consulting 12 young Indian artists, we asked each of them to share an artwork that has resonated with them deeply—the results were both hugely varied and magical.
Scroll on to read their stories.
I. Alicia Souza | The Sea in The Macmillan set of Encyclopaedia
“Out of the few books I had growing up, a set of illustrated Encyclopaedias was my favourite. This page in particular is the first illustration I remember falling in love with dramatically. I was in love with the funny elements snuck in there, the perspective, the entire scene on the whole. I wouldn’t call it art per se but this illustration, though just a page in a set of books, made me want to draw bits from it the moment I laid eyes on it. I never figured out who the illustrator was but I do owe him this memory.”
Alicia Souza is an illustrator who currently resides in Bangalore with her rascally dog, Charlie Brown. She freelances for various corporates and companies but is currently running her seasonal pop-up online store.
II. Archan Nair | Amazing Indoor Clouds by Berndnaut Smilde
“I saw this installation a few years ago and was absolutely blown away. Berndnaut creates luminous masses of vapour that slowly float through rooms and hallways of buildings, transforming them into surreal, dreamlike landscapes. It was hypnotic looking at clouds being inside rooms and real spaces. The way they interacted with light their overall incredible appearance fascinated and confused me at the same time.”
“Using a combination of ‘frozen smoke’ and moisture, the artist is able to create a cloud that can last for a short time—just long enough to be photographed. The temperature and humidity of the space is carefully regulated. The artist then emits a short burst from a fog machine, creating a cloud that dissipates in an instant. What fascinated me most is not just the sheer idea of it, but how far we have come in terms of technology and science to realise and bring ideas into life—the fact that art is not subjected to any medium, it is beyond medium. Art is breathing, it is every atom!”
Archan Nair is a self- taught visual artist, illustrator and digital artist, specialising in mixed media, illustration, and digital art. Formerly a fashion major and entrepreneur, Archan started painting in 2006 at the age of 24 and made the shift to independent artist in 2007.
III. Avinash Jaisingh | A campaign photo for Charles Jourdan by Guy Bourdin
“While I was assisting Suresh Natarajan, one of the finest commercial photographers in India, I got a chance to get my hands on some great fashion bibles in his studio and what not. Being from an art background, I had almost achieved a fair sense of realistic drawing/illustration and what to make out of it. I was ready to jump in to my design career as a visual artist. Then this image happened—and never left me.
Its sense of composition attracted me in the beginning, then the mood and the colour palette. It’s such a beautiful image despite being faceless and location-less. It’s glamorous and wild at the same time. I was awestruck and never really got over this one image. It made me realise how an image can be so distinctly different from my idea and perception of beauty and yet be so amazing. It led me back to books and I started studying metaphors, body language, colours, absurdity in all possible ways all over again.”
Avinash Jaisingh is a visual artist based in Mumbai. After exploring visual mediums such as films, photography and illustrations at MTV, he decided to take a break and now spends his time building brands while working on illustrative photo-essays and short films. He describes his work as unapologetic, unabashed, clean, bold and minimal, and tends to play more with metaphors and surrealism using minimal elements.
IV. Furqan Jawed | What If Sausages Were Blue by Corina Heinrich
“For me, as an artist or a designer, there isn’t one work that has influenced my work in a way that would affect the very core of my work. The biggest inspirations for me are the conversations that I have with people around me and the works that I see in the flesh.
What if Sausages were Blue, is an installation by Zurich-based artist Corina Heinrich. She’d observe things around us, and one day she picked up the sausage fruits from around our house in Bangalore and decided to paint them blue. She painted a whole lot of them.
It was simple. I’d been living in the same house for about three years but I never noticed the sausage fruit (scientific name kigelia pinnata). But after Corina was done with them, I was astonished to see how alluring they looked. It’s a lot about what you see, and what you don’t see. And this thought blends in well with the ever-pervading notion of looking beyond the obvious, which ties in well with the mood of my work as well.
The sausage fruit is not an edible fruit and you can think of them as growing artworks when you look at their abstract geometric form. Corina spent a lot of time in my house, which is painted blue, and the area where I live is dotted with blue houses, just like the sausage fruit. It’s these thoughts that are closer home that make a difference to my work.”
Furqan Jawed was born in Calcutta and grew up in Pune, for the most part. He started his undergraduate studies with engineering, but two years into it, he realised that it wasn’t what wanted to do for the rest of his life. He took a year off, did some photography, and joined a company as a full time graphic designer. Afterwards, he enrolled himself into The Srishti School of Art & Design and began exploring and experimenting, especially with typography. He is now in his final year at Shrishti and currently serves as an art director at an alternative off-space called We’ll Figure It Out, operating out of a garage in a residential space in Bengaluru.
V. Jayesh Sachdev | Marilyn Monroe by Andy Warhol
“Andy Warhol’s concept and approach to art has always excited me. He trashed elitism in art and strongly vouched for art to be accessible and available—art for the masses. Screen prints of his works started a huge trend of mass production of art and introduced consumerism to the idea of art. He celebrated popular culture and questioned the concept of art and common perceptions of art.
I first saw these works in art libraries as an art student and then in-person at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, where I quite literally had goose bumps and a sense of disbelief at been in such proximity to his works.
Quirk Box (of which I’m a co-founder) was founded on the concept of consumerism and art—making art functional, accessible and affordable. Quirk Box, and a lot of my art, I would say has influences of not just the Monroe works, but Andy Warhol by and large as an institution.”
Jayesh Sachdev is an artist, designer and entrepreneur. He is the co-creator of the fashion and lifestyle label Quirk Box and previously the founder/creative director of Emblem, a contemporary art & design studio. Sachdev holds the National Record for having painted India’s largest concept artwork, and has held several exhibitions from New York to Singapore.
VI. Jezreel Nathan | Am Anfang by Anselm Kiefer
“Anselm Kiefer is a German artist born just before the end of the war. He grew up playing in the ruins that the war left behind. I stumbled upon his work while researching the Holocaust, which is a common feature in his paintings resulting from his explorations of the guilt and horror of German history. I’ve fallen in love with his process, his approach and his love for the exploration of unconventional mediums. When paint no longer seems to be enough, he mixes it with ash, earth, straw and the debris of the world.
I resonate with his belief that everything is in process and nothing is ever really finished, affording him the freedom to revisit and transform the pieces displayed in his studios across the world, that he believes are waiting on him to do so. The almost-alchemical process he employs makes his pieces fluid, continuous creations—ever changing as a result of chemical reactions with the atmosphere, rendering them nothing short of alive or eternal.
I was instantly struck by the atmosphere of this piece; it was almost as if its layers and textures opened up a realm in which I could bond with the raw emotion that created it through a visceral dialogue. It changed the way I interacted with my own materials and what I expected from us as a team. It tugged at the part of me that had grown tired from the manicured design I had become so accustomed to and urged me to return to the canvas in pure expression. It rekindled my love for layering, crackling, ageing and decaying and as I revisited the techniques that I seemed to have abandoned, I began to marvel at the probability that this great artist and I felt the same or drew some common meaning or experienced a similar degree of satisfaction.”
Jezreel Nathan is an artist and freelance graphic designer based in Mumbai.
Follow Jezreel on Instagram
VII. Kaveri Gopalakrishnan | The Fountain by Kent Williams
“The first time I saw this cover artwork of The Fountain by Kent Williams, I was blown away. I was a young animation student, devouring all the new illustrators and comics that I could, wanting to understand the ‘right’ way of drawing and creating. Williams’ work made me understand the concept of Synesthesia, the uniting of the senses, where one “translates experience into a psychological reaction, comprehending colour as sensation.”
“There’s a kind of lush rawness in his characters which immediately drew me in. Two bodies, exquisitely detailed, wrapped up in a moment. Rough, chapped skin and this imperfection in humans against a vast, alive, smear of a universe is what the artist captures. I love the way Williams has made me look at the skin and flesh of the human body, in a way no other artist has. You can really feel temperatures, textures, liquid and mass in the yellows, greens, purples, rusts of the flesh. He leaves his pencil lines, smudges and paint dabs the way they are, which really goes against this whole obsession we have as visual communicators to always ‘up the saturation’, ‘clean up’ lines, and try make the artwork look neatly ironed and perfect.
This is a tender moment, and a story of reflection from imperfect humans in parallel universes dealing with death, acceptance, the universe, pain, and this great thing of eternity we wonder about. I made my first hand-painted comic in watercolours at 19, shortly after discovering Kent Williams. Years later, when I look at my older work which was so deeply influenced by this artist, it keeps me humble to realise that while my skillset and experience has vastly grown as an illustrator, it is this very rawness and honesty in storytelling as an image-maker which stays with me at the end of the day.”
Kaveri Gopalakrishnan is an independent illustrator and comics-maker based in Bangalore, India. Following an illustration residency at the School of Visual Arts, New York (August 2014), she shifted largely to making graphic narratives.
VIII. Maitri Dore | The Summer by Giuseppe Arcimboldo
“I saw this painting in 2008 and have loved it ever since. I have a printed copy up on my cupboard and look at it ever so often. There is infinite detail, and the figure is real yet fantastic. Though I don’t paint very much at all, I like the painting for its caricature-ish outcome: the large eyes, broad smile and general mirth. Creating a portrait out of mundane items is what I find unique and the burst of colour is an added bonus.”
Maitri Dore is an architect-cum-illustrator based in Mumbai. Her drawings deal with issues of gender and sexuality, water, sanitation and ecological sustainability. She contributes a weekly cartoon column to the online portal Youth Ki Awaaz on current affairs and has also done illustration assignments for organisations such as PUKAR, The Rainwater Club and Unnati. She hopes to write a graphic novel some day.
IX. Nirvair Nath | Take That by Banksy
“Back in high school, when I was just opening up to the idea of art being more than decorative, I was heavily into symbolism and hidden meanings, and was really into squeezing out convoluted messages from paintings. Banksy’s work, however, cut through all the bullshit while still getting the message across, which excited me a great deal. I remember browsing through some of his work and involuntarily applauding when I saw this piece. While the sentiment really spoke to me, as a lot of Banksy’s work does, artistically what spoke to me was the idea that something so simple could be so powerful.”
Nirvair Nath is a multimedia artist who spends his nights spray-painting two-word messages in the streets.
Check out his website.
X. Pia Meenakshi [Gumani]| We, Tigers by Nom Chi
“I first saw this illustration on Deviant Art sometime in 2007 and liked it from the moment I saw it. I love how whimsical and silly the tigers look but appear dangerous at the same time. I also love how the image of the tigers isn’t particularly proportionate but rather really weird and fluid. This is when I realised that I’d love to make art like this—art that’s not particularly serious, yet has personality and looks gorgeous! This wasn’t even a major painting but a small painting in the artist’s sketchbook, but it stole my heart from the moment I saw it.”
Pia Meenakshi a.k.a. Gumani is a professional illustrator and tattoo artist based in Bangalore. She started tattooing after college and has been at it for years. She enjoys including animals, plants, flowers, insects and all things magical into her tattoo and illustrative work. Her other interests include binding books, collecting skulls, indie rock, collecting old junk, traveling and having dreams where she is frequently chased by oversized leopards.
XI. Rae Zachariah | The Art of Saving A Life by Zim&Zou
“French duo Zim&Zou, (Lucie Thomas and Thibault Zimmerman) based in Nancy, France, work on pieces that are more installation than illustration. Beautifully crafted with paper, their work is colourful and alive. Seeing some of their work in my early years at design school helped me understand that illustrations needn’t be two-dimensional. There are several artists and studios out there doing some fantastic work with paper (The Makerie Studio, People too, Hari and Deepti). Tiptoeing the line between two-dimensional and three-dimensional is an interesting place to be.
What I have learnt from working with paper has influenced how I work digitally as well. It’s a constant game of experimentation to see what works. Playing with textures, shadows and getting the right colour palettes in place, I often find myself drifting from one style to another. Paper had helped me find a voice for my work, it’s still in the early stages, but I see more clearly than ever before, what sort of an artist I could be five years from now.”
Rae Zachariah is an illustrator currently in her fourth year at Srishti Institute of Art, Design and Technology. She knew from a very young age that she would get into a creative field. Art came as a welcome hobby and soon morphed into a way of life. She uses a mix of different media, using traditional paints, pen and ink, while also exploring digital media.
Follow Rae on Behance
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XII. Siddha Kanur | Relativity by M.C. Escher
“Studying architecture brought along its share of conventional thoughts and practices as a student, but there was this one time I accidentally stumbled upon Relativity, a lithograph by Dutch artist M.C. Escher. The moment I saw it, I knew I had found my totem. The way Escher envisioned stairs going nowhere and tube-shaped people defying gravity from all possible directions changed the way I perceived design. It changed the way I executed ideas and even though I created impossibilities in my drawings, this splendid image changed the way I rendered. It influenced me to a point where I couldn’t relate to or agree with conventional ideas and mundane drawings. I began designing weird stairs opening up into impractical physical spaces; confusing patterns; physical impossibilities that only made sense in two dimensions; and fascinating characters. This drawing triggered the quirk in me and above all, got me to find my weapon of choice, the Rotring pen.
It also brings about a sense of serenity when I look at it. I’m not sure how people define a ‘masterpiece’ but this, for me, is his masterpiece if it succeeded in casting such a beautiful influence on my mind within seconds of looking at it.”
21-year-old Bombay-based Siddha Kannur has a special eye for detail, and as a perfectionist insists on delving deep into the intricate details of everything he creates. Mostly working with ink and Rotring pens, he’s also successfully been trying his hand at Wacom Intuos Pro for a month now.
[If you, or an artist/ photographer/ musician you know would like to be a part of this series in which we try to understand people’s influences, get in touch! You can write us an email to contact@homegrown.co.in with the subject line ‘INFLUENCES.’]
