Paint what you know is sound advice for artists, but
paint what you remember is sometimes better. Since settling here in 1978, Shanti Panchal has drawn on memories of his native Gujarat to develop a distinctive iconography that successfully fuses the traditions of East and West. His mysterious, haunting imagery combines the stillness of Indian miniatures with the space of early Picasso and the structure of Bacon and Caulfield, but his slow burning colours are all his own, as is the technique of scrubbing watercolour into heavy paper until it glows with luminous pigment like hand-dyed cloth.
Panchal's latest exhibition is at the Institute of Indian Art and Culture, 4a Castietown Road, London W14 until 30 June, but his work — which won him the Singer & Friedlander/Sunday Times prize in 2001 — is not an ethnic minority taste. Its melancholy is as universal as Virgil's lacrimae rerum and will linger on because it is made to last. Laura Gaseoigne
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