Mehlli Gobhai

Mehlli Gobhai spent a morning speaking with Saffronart about his creative process and the ways in which he characterizes his work.

Over the years several critics have written about your work, describing it variously as architectural, tactile and an ongoing negotiation between light and shadow. How would you characterize your work?

I would describe my work using the term 'organic geometry'. It may...

Mehlli Gobhai spent a morning speaking with Saffronart about his creative process and the ways in which he characterizes his work.

Over the years several critics have written about your work, describing it variously as architectural, tactile and an ongoing negotiation between light and shadow. How would you characterize your work?

I would describe my work using the term 'organic geometry'. It may sound clichéd, but it is important to me that it is not 'cold geometry'. My work is derived from nature, and primarily the human body, which is evident from the figure studies that I started with at the Art Students League when I was in New York. I could show you my notebooks, and you would see the relationship between my drawings and paintings. I studied drawing and anatomy with a fantastic teacher – Robert Beverly Hale. He has written many books on anatomy.

I first drew and painted full-time when I was in New York, after studying graphic design. In my drawings, the line, which used to be something facile to me, became a very deliberate study of bone and muscle. It was very exciting at the time – something that approached the feeling of grand design. I then went on to the painting section of the Art Students League, and found that my work here too derived from the human figure. It was a process of abstracting, reinventing and innovating. I wouldn't call it distorting, however – that to me is a very negative word. The figure broke down completely into flat forms – limbs meeting limbs, suggestive or sexual curves, thighs meeting torso. Eventually, I dropped all apparent reference to the figure and came to a pure form. There was a critic who called me a 'post-minimal reductionist' at my first show. To me, minimalism is important, but I don't particularly like that word. I have great respect for minimalists like Barnett Newman and Rothko, but I felt I had gone beyond minimalism.

My work was distilled from the figure, it was not a cold, calculated geometry. I highlight things like the texture of skin, the play of light on the back – the figure in extreme close-up. My recent paintings for example [Chemould Art Gallery, 2007], evoke the texture of leather – the feeling of ageing skin. The colour has been drained out such that I can express the essence of things. As I said, it is the geometry of nature that I am excited about, not the geometry you learn in school. It is learnt from nature – like the spiral of the nautilus shell that the Greeks studied, or the form of the Egyptian scarab. These natural forms have a distinct mathematical proportion – like the 'golden means' or the ideal of division.

I still draw a lot, and like the concept of the still life. For me it is a genre devoid of drama, though still in touch with reality through natural forms. Take, for example, the work of Morandi – he used simple objects to create monochrome worlds that said everything that needed to be said. I have picked up many such objects that appeal and speak to me. In Golvad, where I have a wadi [small farm], I once found an old, completely bleached, dolphin skull that had washed up on the beach. It was totally worn by the sea, but had a fantastic geometry. I also have a lot of dried coconuts lying around the house there. These things communicate the essence of form – something very important to me. Like I mentioned before, the sense of passing time, age and transformation appeal to me. That's why I enjoy the look and texture of things like old manuscripts, parchment and leather. I don't like decorative or colour-field abstraction. To me, it is a dead end. Organic forms, on the other hand, are always transforming and morphing into something new.

In my work, like nature, there is also a compulsion towards a central axis or the 'axis mundi'. It is like the spinal chord – something derived from nature. I create a symmetry around it; I am not afraid of symmetry. The human body is an architectural feat. Through my work, it has brought me the closest I have come to a sense of truth and grand design.

I believe that in painting, everything should come out of a complete need. Colour should only be used when totally necessary. Same for the line. In my first large show, called 'Marking Black' and held at the Bronx Museum, I exhibited my paintings along with the work of artists like Richard Serra. Though I had never picked up and used black, my paintings, even at that time, were drained of colour. The show held together beautifully – it was relaxing without the onslaught of unnecessary colour. I had a teacher once who had worked with Hoffmann. He used to take his students to the MoMA [Museum of Modern Art, New York] and show us paintings saying things that would shock us. He showed us Matisse's Red Room there once and provocatively said 'this is not a colourful painting' – we learnt how the use of colour there was absolutely necessary to the painting, and how colour should only be used when absolutely necessary.

My paintings involve weeks of thought, even obsession, about the placement of a single line such that it is where it belongs, becoming an irreplaceable element of the work. Thus, there is a sense of order and absolute essentials in my work.

In this context, would you describe your painting as a 'paring-down' process? Can you tell us a little bit about your creative process and what inspires your work?

If you could see my notebooks (I make it a point not to call them sketchbooks), you would see how they are full of the process of arriving at a painting. This is a process of eliminating and reducing. Not of discarding though – everything remains in the painting, although it may be implied and not spelled out. For example, the curator of the show at the Bronx Museum wrote that the modulation of tones in my work made up for the elimination of the curve. I haven't drawn a curve or circle for many years now, and my paintings are very strong on line. The discipline of the straight line is extremely important in my work.

Before leaving India, I studied with Shiavax Chavda in Bombay. While studying Economics and Political Science at Xavier's College here, I used to walk to his studio near Metro Cinema and draw from the figures he used as models. These were people he found on the streets. He also drew Bharatnatyam dancers, as his wife was a dancer and very involved in the scene. I used to accompany him to recitals where we drew the dancers with pens in the dark. It was the greatest discipline and learning experience. There was no softness of crayon or luxury of erasers. The line took on supreme importance. This was further ingrained in New York, where we had models that would hold movement poses for one minute. Using just the line, we had to suggest their movement in this short time. The line had to tell it all. Then there were the three minute poses, the fifteen minute poses and the longest twenty-five minute poses that allowed for greater detail. These were the best experiences – learning the discipline and significance of the line, and how I could use it to imply the extension of form without spelling out its major parts.

I don't appreciate the imprint of a painter's personality on his or her work. The flamboyant brushstroke does not impress me. The work should be separate from the painter and speak for itself. The artist Philip Guston once described his painting process by saying that when he started on a painting, everyone was in the room with him – friends, family and other artists who had impressed him. However, as he painted, they left one by one. Eventually he was the only one left in the room, but then he left as well, and only then was the painting complete. This is important to me – let the painting speak on its own! Let it change lives!