By Shailaja Tripathi - 27 Oct, 2002

Blast from the Past

A decade ago artist Gogi Saroj Pal converted her south Delhi apartment-cum-studio into a 'gallery' because she was tired of waiting for the two existing galleries in the Capital to take notice of her. The experiment, needless to say, failed but not before it earned her name as the artist who tried to do something different. She is back in the news with a new enterprise - exhibiting and selling digital reprints of all the artworks she ever made in her lifetime. At Delhi's Dhoomimal Gallery, Pal, dressed in a skirt and mismatched shoes with a parandi swinging from her hair, sits amidst the reprints, looking blissfully happy. "It has taken me a year-and-a-half of struggling with the computer and one incomplete computer course to get these reproductions ready," she laughs.

"An original can be acquired by just one person whereas a print can be shared amongst ten. I keep coming across people who desire to have many of these works, so I did this for them," reasons Pal, when you tell her that the idea of an artist selling prints of her celebrated works like Ma Hidamba, Anandit Nayika, Kamdhenu and Hatyogini sounds a little outlandish. "The issue of copyright does not arise either because the authorship of art always remains with the artist," she says firmly.But isn't exclusivity the first rule of a modern artist? "My exclusivity will be maintained as I have been working for the last 40 years. I have reworked my paintings and why shouldn't I? It is like raking up the past and walking down memory lane."

Starting from her 'Being a Woman' series down to her 2000 'Nayika' series, each work-National Award winning Swayan- baram, that now sits pretty in the National Gallery of Modern Art, Kamdhenu and Anandit Nayika to name a few - is a landmark in her career.

And while taking out prints of these works, she has relived the experience of making each of them. "To save Lord Krishna, Nand's daughter was killed. Nobody has ever talked about it, nor is she mentioned anywhere in our epics. For me the injustice done to that girl remains a big issue which is why I did Aag Ka Dariya," she says, holding up a print of the work.

Seeing all the reprints of her work together, one realises that even though Pal has painted a variety of social issues, the one thing that threads through her work is the sthai bhava. She needs to understand a work in totality. "If I want to paint good green, then I should know red well," she says.

What makes her attempts so endearing is the fact that Pal is not deliberately trying to break away from the mould, only trying to explore the world on her own terms. From going to three different art schools to pursuing photography, ceramics, jewellery making, sculpture, pottery and printmaking, Pal seems to have done it all.

So will her current venture, a solo shot at making her art accessible to a wider range of people, work? "Frankly, I don't care. Art is the only way of living for me. I love to express myself and when I paint, I cease to exist," she smiles, before going back to discussing the nuances of an image with her artist husband Ved Nayar.