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Lot 77

 

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Born in 1960, Sunil Gawde graduated from the J.J. School of Art in 1980. Despite his art education, Gawde chose to take a job at the Bombay Port Trust, where he worked until 1995. Through his tenure at the Port Trust, he remained alive to his surroundings, incorporating Bombay's dockyards and wharves into his paintings. The peeling layers of paint on a ship's helm, for instance, echoed his own philosophy of the canvas as palimpsest: "That is the... Born in 1960, Sunil Gawde graduated from the J.J. School of Art in 1980. Despite his art education, Gawde chose to take a job at the Bombay Port Trust, where he worked until 1995. Through his tenure at the Port Trust, he remained alive to his surroundings, incorporating Bombay's dockyards and wharves into his paintings. The peeling layers of paint on a ship's helm, for instance, echoed his own philosophy of the canvas as palimpsest: "That is the logic of my paintings," said Gawde, "to strip the overlayers partially, so that earlier histories may be revealed."

Gawde's working methods share as much with craft as with the fine arts. When applying paint, he uses the trowels and scrapers used by masons and house-painters. These implements give his pigments a layered depth; paints are piled and cut, creating dynamically textured surfaces.

In 1995, Gawde received a Charles Wallace scholarship to study in Glasgow, Scotland. The chance to spend a year exclusively painting brought a spirit of contemplation to Gawde's work, while his increased productivitity gave rise to shows in London's ARKS Gallery and at the Mackintosh Museum in Glasgow.

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