Chefs are temperamental because of the pressure in the kitchen - orders delayed, spoiled, misunderstood can mar their reputation - so it's hardly surprising so many of them suffer from hypertension. Writers prefer their isolation no matter how much they might insist they write in the neighbourhood Barista. And artists? For them, their studios are sacred spaces, a place where paint and brush, light leaching in from a cleverly placed window, stacks of canvases, an easel resting against a wall, all become part of their artistic environment.
Not everyone likes windows, though. Amitava has had the one in his third floor studio overlooking a patch of green in the heart of the city bricked up. The room is as spotless as a laboratory. To one side, he has recreated a scaffolding on which his canvases rest - this is where he draws and paints, working precisely like a surgeon.
What a contrast to Madhvi Parekh's basement studio where natural light floods the room. There is a clutter of books, the walls are splattered with paint. She squats on the floor, even though the canvas she has completed is so huge, it is in five parts. There is paint on the fingers of her left hand, which she uses in the manner of a palette, dipping the brush in her right hand and fixing it with just the right amount of pigment.
Actually, the basement is Manu Parekh's kingdom, on temporary loan to Madhvi because she has been working on her iconic Last Supper canvas inspired by the colours of Picasso's Guernica, and which daughter Manisha has also borrowed for a large assignment. This is where he descends from his first floor house, cutting himself off so there is a sense of the studio's separation, so much that even tea is made in his own pantry. There is a jhoola suspended from the ceiling, and large tables, one of which holds his sketchbook in which he must enter something daily.
Jayasri Burman's work is so intricate, I have seen her lying sprawled on a dining table over her canvas, meticulously filling in the details. Sadly, I am an observer of propriety, which is why I did not take a picture of her in inventive disarray on my mobile phone. It would have disconcerted her husband, Paresh Maity, who is meticulous to a fault when he paints, not a lovingly acquired brush or tube of paint out of place. Her uncle, Sakti Burman, dresses in tweed jackets, a cravat at the throat, even in the studio. Though he spreads newspaper sheets below the easel to catch stray drips, his clothes are a measure of his confidence that no drop of oil paint would dare venture beyond its precise placement within his dreamy compositions.
Are there messy painters? S H Raza is fortunate to have a caboodle of people to take care of him in New Delhi who clean up after his efforts on his easel, before which he sits absorbed on his wheelchair. In his studio in Paris, the energy was more - colourful? Chairs, stools, tables, canvases were all put to use to test his colours. There was chaos from which he created the neat arrangement that is a mark of his paintings. Krishen Khanna's Gurgaon studio is a little like that too. You might think there is a lack of organisation, but in fact it is as ordered as the artist who, this weekend, turned 88. Creation without the anarchy of disarray?
M F Husain defied what Gogi Saroj Pal typifies with the pall of smoke and the endless glasses of tea that get her creative juices going. And who's to say one is superior to the other as long as it gets the task done?
Kishore Singh is a Delhi-based writer and art critic. These views are personal and do not reflect those of the organisation with which he is associated
