Of storms, Sartre & lessons in patience

Bengaluru's wild spells of rain left in their wake a city in upheaval, claiming lives, homes and bringing the usually harried routine to a standstill. It was in the midst of a downpour, back in March, when artist Milind Nayak, who was wheelchair bound at the time, made his way to the centre of town for a show. "There was a lot of talk at the time about the trouble the rains were causing," Nayak recalls, two days before his show, Monsoon Moods, opens at Galerie De Arts. As he sat ensconced in his car, gazing out through the windshield, Nayak thought to himself, "Bengaluru is afloat." It was a moment of inspiration that poured itself out onto his canvas, resulting in the painting he went on to title, 'My City Floating'. This work is part of a collection of 14 paintings that will be on display at the gallery.

"No masterpieces," reads a printed note pinned to the noticeboard by the computer where Nayak sits, at his studio in Cooke Town. "An artist friend in Mumbai told me once that masterpieces aren't created, they happen," he smiles. "Every painting is an experiment, a learning experience - I feel no emotional bond with it when it's done. If you do feel that bond, you lose spontaneity." It is in the interest of this creative flow, of constantly wanting to remain at the peripheries of predictability and consistence that defines Milind Nayak best. The unfinished cityscape that leans against the wall of a corridor provides silent proof of this. “I worked on it for a while and I wasn’t happy with what I saw, so I let it go,” he says.  

Still in recovery from an illness that had him confined to a wheelchair for over a year, Nayak continues to work sitting down, on a wooden chair that stands before his giant easel. "I don't care, as long as I can work," he says, in an almost offhand way as he walks gingerly towards the large easel that dominates his little studio. This he pushes around alarmingly, sending it with a clatter into the rows of books and paintings that line the walls. "Irreverence is the word," he laughs. "I'm always that!"

This apparent impudence has fetched Nayak more than his fair share of criticism from the artist community, a problem that troubled him little at the start and does so even less today. Determined to test the validity of these claims for himself, Nayak conducted a series of experiments with crow quill nibs, slaving away before his canvas for several hours at a stretch to get the details right. "I would wear out the edge, heat the tip over a candle and start again until the nib gave out entirely. Then I would buy a new one," he recalls. It was painfully slow work – a single drawing would take as long as 20 hours and Nayak would break the monotony by slipping out onto the rudimentary treehouse he had built himself atop the cashew tree in his garden. “I would spend hours there, reading,” he says. "To me, these were lessons in patience."

Monsoon Moods provides a tumultuous experience to its viewers - one that has taken over two decades to achieve. Three distinct approaches mark Nayak's own evolution as an artist and a human being. The start of the series, back in the 1980s, signify a return to the groping, wide-eyed innocence of childhood, "I wasn't an adult painting, I was 10 years old again." Growing up in Manipal, Nayak went to a school that gave every classroom a view of the ocean and the children would sit, with bated breath, watching a bank of clouds roll ominously towards the shore. "We knew we would be drenched that day," he says. "The rain would start as a drizzle and explode onto the landscape."

A terrible, roaring silence is palpable in this group of paintings - one of which hangs proudly in his office. That approach evolved into one of calm - "The rain is very different when you're looking at it from your balcony with a hot cup of tea and when you're actually caught in it, walking home through the slush," he explains. Later paintings capture the tranquility that exists amidst the chaos and finally, the calm that follows every storm. "These changes are bound to happen, based on my mood. That's why the exhibition goes through a whole gamut of perceptions and feelings," he says. "Some works are defined by movement, others stillness. In some instances, the adrenaline surges through and fills you up until it hurts."

Books on poetry, modern art and philosophy line his shelves, for Nayak is a relentless reader – “I have always read every scrap of paper I could get my hands on,” he says. He flips through his archive as he talks, scrolling through decades of work and pausing to recall the author he had been reading at the time – Camus, Jung, Sartre, Nietzsche, Dostoyevsky. “I remember being caught by the principal for bunking class in college, where I was studying to be a doctor,” he smiles. “I was lost in Bradley’s Shakespearean Tragedy when I found him standing behind me! Not only was I bunking class, I was bunking an English class!” That mishap proved fortuitous – it moved his principal enough to persuade his parents to rethink his educational choices! “At that time, I was driven by a pursuit of knowledge. That has changed today, the desire for knowledge has evolved into the desire for being.”

When: Dec. 1 to Dec 21
Where: Galerie De'Arts, Barton Centre, M.G. Road