Painting in her own language

You imagine her with a rucksack on a mountain trail; she might be the sort of person whom you expect to lead a corporate training programme; perhaps, at a pinch, she might be your choice for Fear Factor. The last place you expect her is to be in a studio, in front of an easel, painting kitsch.

Not that she is painting kitsch "" at least, not any longer. Manisha Gera Baswani has got over that phase of her life a few years ago. But then she's got over several other phases too "" a propensity to replicate the miniature idiom by doing immensely detailed borders, for instance.

To quit the small format for large canvases. To quit watercolour for tea water for oil. To stop fretting about two very small children, who have grown to a more manageable age...

At Palette in Delhi, the luminescent spaces where she sits with a packet of biscuits, hair sheared short, Baswani is being hostessy. Coffee. A tour around the gallery. Conversation. And oodles of nostalgia.

Her third solo show in Delhi, her sixth ever, Baswani is a bit of a surprise in the art fraternity which, like most professional fiefdoms, doesn't allow in "outsiders" too easily.

She's the quintessential child doodler who made good, the tomboy who surprised herself by being, simultaneously, feminine. But like most Punjabi refugees (truly, it was her parents who came from Pakistan, she was born much, much later), it was her grit that counted most.

Such as her admission at Jamia Millia University where she got in without a portfolio to her credit. Or her precocious meeting with the French cultural councilor that won her a scholarship to Paris. Even her stint at the Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts where she was audacious enough to work on her own terms.

"That's when it all came together," she sighs contentedly "" though she'll admit she was once admonished by her "guru", A Ramachandran, because she professed herself to being happy with her work; apparently, if you're an artist, you cannot afford to be in a state of bliss. "Not that I'm not materialistic," she admits practically, "I like the good life."

In the beginning, though, that good life seemed a little difficult to aspire to. Her guru said she took her art "too seriously". Critics said she was ornamental, decorative. And when she married, the couple seemed to spend all their savings on buying the works of other Indian artists instead of sensibly on homely things such as a dining table or a sofa. "It was not an investment then," she says, "I like people to do well, I like to help people."

She says she was lucky her faculty consisted of such talented artists as Ramachandran, Paramjeet Singh, Rajeev Lochan, Jatin Das, Roobina Karodia... she rattles off other names, but in the end, her art has been influenced by none of them. "They taught me to look at things that gave me food for thought. From my guru, I learnt to look at miniatures, the way colours overlapped, the bend of a tree." She also learnt her love of books from Ramachandran, who also influenced her to collect oleographs and glass paintings.

That was Baswani's "" she was Gera then "" way of looking in. Her painter's gaze looked into enclosed spaces. At people in their homes. Fans, tables, chairs. Later, she would learn to look out of that space, out of a window.

Her preoccupation with a formal arrangement remained with her, but Baswani ran through a gamut of impressionistic themes "" from pichwais to truck art to havelis and courtyards and kitsch. Her siblings inspired two distinctive aspects of her work. Even as she grappled with, first, Elvis Presley "" or, at least, Presley's clothes "" set within her familiar jails and frames, she was also absorbed into the urban iconisation of James Bond and the Star Wars trilogy.

When she'd exhausted those as a possibility, Baswani turned to the glazed embers of the Japanese shikishi board, and her other brother's interest "" astronomy.

Thereafter, her works became more three-dimensional, the jaali "" even though it is much more present "" took on a sparser role, no longer decorative but, now, the chief element. "The direction," Baswani cystal-gazes, "is becoming architectural." Nor does she rule out the possibility of "more interactive art" "" or installation. "That could be my next turn," she prophesies.

She has always been susceptible to influences. Earlier, it was more by way of rejection. When Ramachandran suggested she, perhaps, should not do oils, she went right ahead and did them. And when he declared her ready to do oils, she shifted her oeuvre to tea water. "I would make tea in different strengths in different vessels, and keep them over days," she explains the process, choosing her colour densities on gouache as she proceeded with her work.

Right now, she's at a loss of direction. She's been to Egypt and Israel and Jaisalmer, and has been struck by the sparseness of all three destinations which, it seems, are her current obsession. Will they influence her work, these travels? Baswani shrugs. "My work," she explains, is spontaneous, never deliberate. There is a thought process, of course, but when I stand before a blank canvas, I am unsure of what I will be working on, still it flows..."

"She's a thinker," agrees gallerist and collector Rohit Gandhi, "she's efficient and skilled and not prolific." If that's anathema in today's world of art, it is what makes her a favourite among collectors. "In her work, the investment angle isn't there," Gandhi struggles to explain, "because her buyers are not 'investors' but those who enjoy art."

Her dedication may be one aspect of her work, but on the other hand her subject "" at odds with her contemporary peers "" carries no political resonances. Does that make her a lightweight among a younger generation of serious painters. Quite the contrary, explains Gandhi: it gives her a language of her own. Baswani herself is immune to such criticism.

Some gallerists, especially from overseas, have preconceived notions about the artists whose works they want to show, she says. "Some day," she adds, "they'll want to show our work" "" the sweep includes Manisha Parekh and Anjum Singh "" "the so-called decorative artists," she laughs.

At that time two things will happen. People will return to view her work again and again because it will have become unaffordable for most. And, for those who have bought in early, it'll be a time to laugh all the way to her next exhibition.