Glimpses from the sketchbook of a gypsy

One of the earliest tools for documentation has been watercolour. Cave walls around the world and canvasses stay witness to the fact. But in the digital age, when pixels have replaced strokes and brushes, Allen Shaw prefers to work in the age-old tradition of watercolour.

Shaw was born in India but currently lives in Germany and has been trotting the globe looking for fodder for his journal. Among the several countries that he’s covered, Hungary, Japan and Poland are a few. In the past two decades, he has travelled to Kutch intermittently and his current exhibition will showcase the documentation that came out of the entire period. Through the period, the artist felt particularly connected to the nomadic Rabari community as he thinks of himself to be one of them as well.

According to the artist, it is the unfathomable spirit that brings Shaw to the barren lands of Kutch again and again. “My quest for discovering new places, cultures and people through my sketchbooks has taken me from the majestic heights of the Himalayan range in Leh to the rice fields of Wajima in Japan, from the sun soaked beaches of South France to the small islands of Croatia, form the nearly postcard perfect landscapes of Switzerland to the streets filled with history in Poland. From tracing the ghosts of the communist past of Hungary and Russia to quaint little villages in Italy, from the grandeur of Gaudi’s architecture in Spain to the colourful people of Kutch. But Kutch remains the only place I find myself returning back to for the past two decades,” explains the graduate of National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad.

Shaw’s “love affair with Kutch” started as a student of the design institute. “I went there as a young design student to study a few village communities. Since then it’s been a pilgrimage each time I have gone back.”The exhibition titled, The Kutch Pilgrimage, is a study of the people in this region and their beautiful crafts, which stand in stark contrast to the vast barren landscapes. “These people have walked through the pages of my sketchbooks and left their stories behind. Given my lifestyle of being permanently on the move I can’t help looking at some of these communities as fellow nomads.”

From March 22, 11 am – 7 pm, at Artisans, 52-56 Dr V B Gandhi Marg, Rhythm House Lane, Kala Ghoda