Aditya Raj, Delhi @Adirajart
Aditya Raj’s policeman father was typically posted in small towns, where there wasn’t much to do. So growing up, Raj doodled cartoon characters on scraps of paper, and stuck them on the walls. By 2016, after he finished law school and was living in Delhi, he knew art was his calling.
“I wanted to paint the mundane. Things one overlooks. We keep going to the same bookstore or kachoriwala, but rarely stop and look at it for its beauty,” says Raj. “Delhi gave me my politics, and understanding of so many things. It’s no surprise that I wanted to paint it.”
In Raj’s watercolour works, the city seems chaotic, but also calm. A hawker’s cart full of mangoes provides a pop of yellow against a grey landscape. Generations-old shopfronts huddle companionably, overwhelming the senses just as they do when you navigate old Delhi.
Raj paints from reality, only changing the scale for effect. He captured 4S, an old queer-friendly pub in Defence Colony, which he visited through law school. “When I finally decided to paint it, I gathered all my own stories and experiences and put them in,” he says. “The work is a moment in time and I like to keep it like that. It’s like a small little private story.”
Raj’s prints start at ₹3,000 for an A4 piece.
Paul Fernandes, Bengaluru @apaulogy_gallery
Paul Fernandes was drawing, at age three, all over his home in Bangalore. He graduated from The Faculty of Fine Arts, Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda, moved to Bombay and worked in advertising in 1982. But by 1986, he moved back to Bangalore and began recreating the city in watercolour.
Like so many Indian cities, Bangalore was changing – his own home was being razed to make way for a high-rise. His illustrations ended up capturing simpler times: A childhood spent climbing the 40-odd trees in compound, getting lost in a book, waving at passing trains. He also sketched the Plaza Theatre on MG Road, which was lost to the Metro line in the early 2000s. “You could feel the change in the city. The familiar was suddenly not there. These drawings were a way to get people to talk about the old days,” says Fernandes.
The works pack in detail. For the Plaza, Fernandes managed 10-15 sittings at different times of the day and night at the same spot. “You wouldn’t notice something like a crack in the wall or a grille during the first few visits,” he says. “I have to be honest to everyone’s memory.” To the Bengaluru residents of today, Fernandes’s works spark waves of nostalgia in a way that old photos don’t.
Fernandes has revised many drawings, notably one featuring the restaurant The Only Place. A woman told him the bougainvillea creeper was missing. “She was tall and her hair got caught in it. I’m not tall nor do I have hair,” says Fernandes, explaining why he missed it.
Fernandes’s newest book of illustrations is called The Great Bangalore Morph.
Shashank Naidu, Hyderabad @brown_naid
When he was in Class 2 in Assam, Shashank Naidu’s class was tasked with drawing the national flag. Most students fit the tricolour within neat rectangles. He turned in something different – a bit of flutter, mimicking an actual flag. “That’s when I knew I was good at sketching,” says Naidu, 29.
But first, the tried-and-tested formula. Naidu completed his engineering in Hyderabad, earned an MBA in Bengaluru and took up a corporate job. He only sketched on the side: A black-and-white Charminar, Secunderabad Clock Tower, Falaknuma Palace and other commissioned work. But there were soon enough orders for him to paint full time.
It takes longer than composing a picture, obviously. “I sit there, observe the place, people, weather, lighting, at different times of the day, and then build on it,” says Naidu. And unlike photos, he doesn’t capture on site. He prefers to paint out of memory, using references he’s sketched and collected.
This means the works are both real and imagined. Mr Tiger, a character, appears in several of his paintings, walking by, observing a detail or even making team for himself in a cabin in the woods. “I wanted to create something relatable but intriguing,” says Naidu. “I prefer swaying away from reality. To capture reality we have cameras.”
Naidu’s commissioned works start at ₹10,000 for an A3 piece.
From HT Brunch, May 25, 2024
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