The Blank CanvasAuthor: Prabhakar Barwe & Translated by: Shanta Gokhale

The mystery of a blank canvas lies in its apparent empitness. The surface suggests this emptiness, but is it really so? Or is there more to it than that? The blank canvas throws these questions at the artist and falls silent. But, even as he contemplates it, its mysterious emptiness appears to expand; the dimensions of time-space , length-breadth as we know them begin to change rapidly; the white space within the frame grows deeper; the texture as the artist first saw it, disappears, giving way to a sky covered in cloud. The light shifts; subtle shadows fall on it. There is a blister near the frame, a knot in the weave. An ant scurries along the frame. The white paint used to prepare the canvas and the fine threads of its warp and weft begin to assume strange shapes and meanings. Soon the surface gives way to unsuspected dethps where the artist's imagination rapidly follows.

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