Colour, Chaos, and India

India didn’t give me a style. It gave me permission.

Living in Mumbai meant living inside colour every day. Pink next to orange next to green wasn’t unusual — it was normal. Rust sat beside turquoise. Fluorescent signage glowed over faded paint and nothing felt out of place.

At first it looked chaotic. Then I realised it wasn’t chaos at all — it was confidence.

After a while, that kind of visual intensity changes how you see. You stop worrying about whether colours should work together and start noticing what they actually do when they meet on the surface. You stop asking whether something is too bold and start asking whether it feels alive in the painting.

Mumbai didn’t tell me what to paint. But it made it harder to be timid in the studio.

Living there raised my tolerance for saturation. It made me more comfortable letting colours collide instead of behave. It encouraged risk, even when I wasn’t consciously trying to take it.

India didn’t shape the subjects of my work. It shaped the attitude behind the painting.

Once you’ve lived inside colour used without apology, it’s difficult to go back to using it politely.

And once you stop being polite with colour, the painting starts to have more to say.