An important turning point in my life came when I joined the Faculty of Fine Arts, MSU, Baroda, in 1990 for a Bachelor’s degree in painting. It was an important moment for me as it was to shape my career in the coming years. But even more influential was the effect of the Masters programme that I did between 1994 and 1996. It was during this time that I became more focused as the faculty was phenomenal. My teachers, people like Vasudevan Akkitham, Nataraj Sharma and B.V. Suresh, influenced me hugely. They pushed all the students to have a vision and create a perspective. And this push gave me the strength to move towards finding something which was more personal in art. This is something that I have followed in my work to this day.
Getting a scholarship to study at the University of California in San Diego, where I did my second Masters in Visual Arts, too, was a milestone in my life. I met the French documentary filmmaker Jean-Pierre Gorin who was teaching filmmaking at the university. He pointed out to me that the act of making collage-like paintings could be utilised to portray a fragmenting world.
