Catching my breath....as always!

My life is often like a well stacked apple cart that takes a tumble, leaving me scrambling to bring back order around me. It can often be the most unexpected and unrelated factors that may create a crisis, and however "prepared" one believes one maybe the order of routines are hit immediately at the knees, and one inevitable will stumble.

But rather than fall completely, I prefer to limp and catch at any stabilising props around myself, and force the balance of my routine back into place. I think these occurrences that disrupt (though not enjoyable in the least!) are really essential lessons in survival.

Perhaps I need to explain firstly that the general understanding of crisis always appears to suggest that only things that are massive in impact, qualify as being destabilizing. This is totally a skewered perception. We need to accept and recognise that in everybody's world, like tiny capillaries, our existence is fed by numerous things that if ruptured become like a bruise on the skin of our existence.

Practicality to think on ones feet and problem solve without making everything into an entire episode of magnitude, teaches one how to filter thought processes in ways that do not over exaggerate nor underestimate , but to contextualise and target the essential priority.

My life today has me often in circumstances and situations that demand my time away from my studio. But on each such occasion of distraction I quell my jack-in-the-box emotions of frustration that pop up, and instead mediate to learn lessons of patience, compassion, humanism and sharing that I know will open up bigger worlds for me as a painter.

In the conversations of other artists that sometimes surround me, I often feel stifled by the smallness of worlds where the grandeur of self-importance stands out like an ugly rash: irritating and persistent. And so it is wonderful to know that amidst this unfortunate predictability of human folly are artists like Riyas Komu who quietly does so much in the lives of other artists; and the vision of Sudhir Patwardhan who conceives the truth of a travelling exhibition to hold real meaning and impact. Dashing men both; you are my heroes for the sincerity of your convictions and the examples you set.