There is nothing to the humble cellotape. It is utility in a muddy-brown color. It seals and secures cartons. It holds stuff together. It is one of those objects in our environment we have trained our perception to gloss over. Or is it?
It turns out the cellotape had a secret life all along. All it required was an artist, Gajanan Kabade, to coax the story out.
Gajanan was on his way to finding his voice as an artist when he took a fateful ride in an autorickshaw that had its tarpaulin held together with cellotape. He had always painted with fanatical regularity; almost every weekend would see him staking his easel somewhere on the outskirts of Mumbai. The first paintings I saw of his were landscapes. But the trees and hillocks grew softer edges and then people walked away and abstraction set in. But, personally, I was never as enthused about his work until cellotape came into his palette. Even then it took me a while to warm up to it. The initial works didn’t express much more than novelty of the medium. But in Gajanan’s own words, during the initial phase, cellotape was merely a “material.” It is now a “medium.”
I agree. He is immersed in his medium and he is enjoying his time with it and it shows. His newer works display a newfound sense of confidence and power. Now his work speaks for itself and his own descriptions of it reveals an awareness that wasn’t obvious earlier. One recent afternoon, he stunned me with his newest works and vision. He underscored once again that day that we might possess potential but that potential means nothing if it goes unrealized. We need to work our craft with tremendous discipline and push the envelope everyday. Over time, our work is transformed and so are we.
A brief bio of Gajanan: He is originally from Miraj near Kolhapur. He was an art teacher before joini. He completed his G. D. Art at Kalavishwa Mahavidalaya, Sangli in 1991 and Diploma in Art Education at Sir J.J. School of Art, Bombay in 1992. He can be reached at gajanan_kabade@yahoo.com.
I think today’s my paintings are extension of landscape painting, now I am not seeing outside and doing now I am seeing insight of my and they are happenings. It take After spending years doing the landscape painting