"In a curious way, one has always anticipated Bhupen Khakhar scratching clay and getting fired up on ceramics; an anticipation fuelled by the painter's consistent partiality to a lustre palette-the environmental, architectural, human and organic forms in his canvas forever bathed in a surreal sheen; his figures revelling in an aura of luminiscence, otherwise available only to the ceramic medium.
The almost eerie, iridescent hair, lips, eyes, elbows, buttocks, balconies, turrets, trees and boats within the converging geography of his urbanscapes; the ongoing tension between sharp angles and teasing curves in his frames, seem to foretell their future existence as installed objects; a future solidification that his favourite painterly ground of reddish sienna, alice blue and salmon pink aspire for.
The artist's early fascination with the kitsch idols of gods and goddesses that crowd our pavements during the festive months and his attempts to translate the discourse of those 'mithai' colours on to his social satires on canvas, should have alerted Khakhar-watchers to the secret workings of his mind."
- An excerpt from 'Landscapes with Depths: The Ceramic Dreams of Bhupen Khakhar' by Sadanand Menon.