Shanti Panchal: A Personal Language of Painting 2007-2018

What at first glance seems to be a portrait of a young woman in an elegant white dress, is on closer inspection, revealed to be the study of someone with a prosthetic leg. Inspired by a cohort of Paralympians who gained so much positive media coverage around the London Olympics of 2012. Panchal was particularly moved by a specific individual, Stefanie McLeod Reid MBE, who competed in track and field events. Although Stefanie is fair-skinned, Panchal has used his favoured pigments, burnt umber and burnt sienna, to create her skin tones; this is not an attempt to 'Indian-ise' the portrait but rather harks back to Panchal's first use of natural pigments, which were all that were available to him as a young boy in rural Gujurat. Panchal also relates his use of these brown pigments to the five natural elements of the Hindu religion - earth, water, fire, air and void; his childhood was literally coloured by the organic world around him and the monsoon mud.