A Ramachandran: ‘I am an artist who paints by the acre’

LUMINOUS SHADES of tangerine, mossy green and sunlight yellow seem to leap out at me from a large canvas that occupies centrestage in A Ramachandran’s studio in Bharti Artists’ Colony, Delhi. It is the start of winter. The octogenarian is not taking any chances, given the light chill and the polluted air. Stray wisps of silver hair peep out from the back of his white silk cap, which pairs elegantly with the handloom white scarf wrapped functionally around his neck. His white moustache contrasts sharply against his dark skin. “We both have the same complexion,” he would tell me later that evening. It isn’t surprising, given his Kerala roots and my Goan ancestry. He beckons me to take a seat at a wooden table poised directly in front of his five-panelled painting. When he finds me immersed in its landscape of lotuses with a swarm of orange swallow-like birds taking flight, he tells me with an air of cool accomplishment, “I just finished this yesterday!”

9 January 2019