Rediscovering Curiosity: My Journey from Law to Art
- Nakul Sahnan
- Jun 16, 2024
- 3 min read
If you asked me to describe my practice a year ago, this is what I'd have to say. A lot has changed since, but I believe it's important to start here to understand the process of my artistic discovery.
April 2023
"I wouldn’t be able to describe my art even if I tried. Before I get into why, I’d like to tell you a little about myself.
As a child, I found myself questioning everything. I was curious about the way things worked, often opening broken devices in an attempt to fix them. I noticed various things in my environment and raised questions about why and how.
As I grew older, this curiosity began to fade away. With the pressures of the 12th-grade board exams on the horizon, I faced a question we’ve all been haunted by: What would I like to do when I grew up? This led me to law school, aiming for what one may call a ‘sure-shot career’—something safe, reputable, and financially stable.
It was only after graduating from university that I realised the question shouldn’t have been 'What would you like to do?' but 'Who would you like to be?'"
A few years went by and I couldn't stop thinking about this, the curiosity from my childhood returned.
It was only during a bored lockdown day that I finally began to explore, picking up a few paintbrushes I found lying around from when my mum was in art school. I painted for the first time in years, it really wasn’t great, but it did feel right. I was suddenly able to express myself in ways I hadn’t been able to earlier. I was able to explore ideas and concepts that haunted my imagination. The canvas was my storyboard.
This slowly became an obsession, I explored new ideas before finishing the last, fearing I might lose the visual in my mind. I ended up understanding myself better and found my purpose in life. Something which would wake me up in the morning and keep me up at night. All to make the perfect conceptualisation of what was in my head, to the best of my abilities.
I quit my job and went to work with the reputed artist, designer and filmmaker Padma Shri awardee Muzaffar Ali. After spending a month working with sir, I wanted to learn more and decided to continue as an artist-in-residence, as no amount of time I spent in his realm of creativity felt like it was enough. The world was locked in and all we had were days of creation ahead of us. It was during this time that I understood the mind of an artist, his obsession to explore far outdid anything I had imagined. For him art didn’t stop at the canvas or paint, it extended to leaves, plaster, wood and anything else he could get his hands on.
After a short stint of about eight or so months working with him, I decided, I was ready to venture out on my own, eager to use everything I learnt, in my own work.
I headed up to the mountains, where I spent a few months trekking and painting my experiences. Leaving art at places I visited. On returning to Delhi, I started my own practice opening a small studio where I could work on all the pieces I had imagined.
Now coming back to the original question of how I’d describe my art. I couldn’t put it down into one form if I tried. I, like my mentor find myself constantly exploring new ideas. These may be found in Abstract Landscapes, surrealism, or a raw impressionist abstract I just felt like making in the moment.
My art however is inspired by my interests ranging from the curiosity of our natural world to the emotions that nature sparks within us, my mind wanders like a child and I’d have it no other way!"
"This is the first of many posts I have in mind. My goal for this blog, is for it to be an unfiltered collection of my thoughts, a place to share my journey and start a conversation with other likeminded individuals."
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