Newspaper: The Sunday Express
Dated: Febuary 28,2010,
Article by:Anjali Mathai

Anjali Mathai

Nikhil Chaganlal, in his latest exhibition ‘Intimate Vistas of the Interior’, has wandered into a territory that not many artists before him have—portraits of the interior. “I want the viewer to escape into the paintings,” says the artist. “Feel the sea breeze on their faces, sip on the wine and listen to the music in the background.”
Glimpsing the rooms, with their cosy clutter and orgy of
untamed colours, it’s easy to do just that. Human presence is only obliquely hinted at by a dog lying curled on the hearth or a half-empty mug of coffee.
Chaganlal says he wanted to become an interior designer when he was young. But his fate, perhaps, was sealed in his childhood when he would take his mother’s lipstick and scribble endlessly on the walls. “My mother, fed up with my antics, would resort to tying up my hands,” laughs the 51-year-old. His brush with art began at an early age when his father, a Gujarati art dealer, would take him to Pundole and Chemould galleries where they would view the works of artists like M F Husain and Tyeb Mehta. “That was our favourite pastime instead of normal things like going to the movies,” reminisces Chaganlal wistfully.