Manu Parekh's exuberance about celebrating life is infectious. But he keeps it under wraps, revealing it only when you nudge him to talk more. And he'll tell you that "a painting should be done playfully" so that its enjoyment is communicated to the viewer.
As he scouts around the brighter side for everything in life, he prefers that his vibrant paintings of landscapes, still life and heads do the talking for him.
Parekh recalls that he was inspired to paint in his childhood by his teacher, Mukund Shroff, at school in Ahmedabad. Later, S B Palsikar nurtured that talent at the Sir JJ School of Art in Mumbai, where he joined in 1962.
He suggests that had it not been for these teachers, maybe life would have taken a different course. "I can still feel their presence when I paint," he says.
Even though Parekh's long stint as design consultant for the Handicraft and Handloom Export Corporation of India took him to the corners of India, making him respect craftsmen for their immense knowledge, it is Calcutta and Benares that he feels most connected with.
"Both cities are important to me as both are full of human activity, with immense energy," he says, though he is quiet about his choice of ceasing to paint Calcutta, devoting that effort to appease Benares instead.
Flirting with complete abstraction initially, then landscapes, still life and heads, today Parekh's oils, acrylics and watercolors are a mix of them all. He has allowed himself a vocabulary that borders between the realm of reality and abstraction, giving himself "a language that is full of freedom", he says.
He is busy painting another series on Benares these days on huge canvases inspired by Monet's Water lilies. But Parekh's Benares is fictional where the reality is romanced with abstraction, making his landscapes "my own recreated Benares", explains Parekh.
Parekh's landscapes are vengefully vibrant - the temples, ghats and the sky painted with energetic colours where the energy of people is present but not seen.
The serenity of the mystic city on a busy canvas creates an illusion - that someone just might be sitting and chanting a prayer in one of the temples. "I don't want to use human figures to represent the city's energy," he says.
True to his positive attitude, Parekh prefers to overlook the strong criticism that people might have on issues affecting Indian art these days.
He doesn't think that young artists these days have it any easier as they face tougher competition. Being associated with theatre, he has a soft corner for installation art.
"Installation is like a stage without performing actors, but it still performs," he says. And he is happy to give a gallery one-third of his painting sales if it does good work by managing the hassles of public relations.
"This is the right time in Indian art to produce a good work of art," he insists about the market.
