not stuck into a particular period of time thats what i like to do so gravitas is the word that i would use rather than sadnessyou had said in an earlier interview that you learnt to colour first and then draw and you always do that tell us about it no that is not what i said i said that i think in colour and i paint directly on to the canvas without drawing i do draw the drawings are separate when i am doing a big work to a certain extent when you are doing a large work in oils it kinds of paints itself one area leads to another and if you are drawing i think the work becomes more stilted more as though it has come out of a drawing board rather than coming out of the emotions and spontaneity of the artistyou had an american grand mom and had a bramho samajist family and so were westernized even before you went abroad how much did that affect your work well i think my early works were very westernized and when i went to paris other than being influenced by the school of paris which was like picasso and all the moderns i was very drawn to early christian art with its solemnity that comes a lot from those influences and early christian art because it was full frontal those iconic figures which as you see from this exhibition continue to be and have been there in this 38 years much later after i married my husband the influences of south india and kerala were there indian influences of indian subjects tend to come into my workmarrying into an orthodox southindian family did it influence your paintings they werent very orthodox but they were traditional yes and it did influence my work the series of namboodiris and i was very much influenced by some very early photographs which i found in the palace collections in my husbands home town calangute one of his aunts was married to another raja and from her i got a wonderful collection of glass negatives of early works and whole phase of my work was influenced by that specially the sepia of brown colouringit has been said that your techniques and sensibilities are very western how do you respond to that well i would say they were very less western than many of the abstract painters i mean you dont say that to tayeb or gaitonde or ram kumar their works are also very affected specially the abstract painters like souza there was nothing very indian about his work of course husain was an exception to that because the indain subject matter to the mythological themes entered into his work of paintingswhat are your views about the current contemporary indian art scenario well it is really an emerging scenario where so many things are happening in different spheres of art i think the youngsters have led the