Dec 20, 1999

Nataraj Sharma, 42
Painter

THE URBANATOR

For Nataraj Sharma, art isn't "like fast food". Like life, it's something serious and meant only for the discerning. Be it his simple figures or industrial landscapes, Sharma has a keenness for contemporary trends. It shows in his recent painting "New Housing Society on the Outskirts of a Town", which depicts in detail the rapid industrial development -- the foreground all pipes and machine parts.

Like Bhupen Khakhar, from whom he draws inspiration, Sharma loves to try out new visuals and themes. But it is with industrial progression that he's currently obsessed with. Sharma sees the building of new factories, housing colonies and roads as a great force symbolising violence and visual poetry. "I don't see them in moral terms but just as a witness," says the Vadodara-based artist. That yen for urban expansion has led to the development of a style which can be called three-in-one -- a three-part painting with the common thread of urban dislocation and re-forming. Something deadly serious, something that can be called Sharma's own.

-Uday Mahurkar

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