"Gita Govinda".

MANISHA GERA BASWANI works in water colour and gouache on paper and excels in a contemporary interpretation of the original Indian miniatures. The format is miniature, the inspiration is miniature, but the work is contemporary. "So this interpretation is done through my own experience - the experience of a 30-year- old Indian artist. And I use my own colours - in fact colour is my forte," she says.

Manisha got involved in the miniatures while working on a multi- media project on "Gita Govinda", the 13th century poem written by Jayadeva, at the Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts during the years 1994-96. This Sanskrit epic had far-reaching influence on practically all art forms in India and Xerox, Palo Alto, U.S., provided the technological and financial support for this project which will be travelling to all major museums and art institutes of the world.

The artist created her earliest work of art on the walls of her home, and her mother pasted paper on the panels so that the colours would show. When she grew up she went to the Nivedita Vidya Mandir in Delhi for schooling where she was told that with all her potential for drawing and painting she could take up art as a profession in the future. Influenced by the spiritual atmosphere of the institution, she took "diksha" after which meditation became part of her life. On completing school, she joined the Art Department of the Jamia Milia University and under the guidance of A. Ramachandran - the great muralist - she began to realise the real meaning of art.

Her talent earned her a French Government scholarship, and she travelled through Europe during 1993-94, meeting artists and visiting galleries and museums. On return to India, she got involved in the multi-media project on "Gita Govinda" which took two years to complete. The innovative spirit of the miniatures with their stylistic variations in the presentation of animal and human forms, vegetation, the division of spatial areas and above all their rich colour schemes, had a lasting effect on her and influenced her later work in a big way.

She travelled deep into Rajasthan, visited Jaisalmer and Shekhawati and went up to Ladakh in 1997 to study the Buddhist miniatures. In Ladakh, she found a culture "living and breathing" - she had to travel for hours in the mountains to reach the monasteries where the murals have been preserved. "I witnessed the ceremonies - monks chanting - and this was a culture so deep and the experience so unusual that I returned and produced a series of works on Ladakh, and Ladakh continued to keep coming into my work for a long time. And slowly the theme of the miniatures became the core of my work."

She set up a studio of her own a little away from her home in Delhi but shortly converted her bedroom into her studio as she had a little baby to look after. She would work late into the night to make up for time lost in the day and it was not canvas any more. It was all paper, as she found that oil and turpentine affected the health of the child - and she turned to water colour and gouache, a difficult medium to handle after using oils all these years. With determination, she took acid-free paper and a began creating her own colours. In fact, she began enjoying the process of making colours out of colours which came through layering. Usually gouache is a medium that does not permit easy layering - it took her eight years to master the process and "gouache at last responded to me." She used only the brush, and removed colours in the process of applications.

Alongside the contemporary interpretation of miniature art, Manisha became concerned with the kitsch art, a lot of which is around us. She took note of the bright colours, the visuals and images which took her down the memory lane and tended to get into her work but she says: "That is not the major part of my creation.

What is important to me is going back to the Indian tradition, bringing it back and linking it up with the modern mainstream."

How would she co-relate this going back and coming forward - like going to the temple and coming back home? "Diksha" on one had and kitsch art on the other?

"That indeed gives me a lot of strength," she says. "Going to Vedanta classes gives me strength to come back and paint. It gives me so much of peace. There are days when I do not paint at all. Other days I work from seven to eight hours at a stretch, and even with the child around, I can manage undisturbed."

Asked about the essence of her art, she put it like this: "For me art is becoming nearer and nearer to what I want to do - and I am translating every activity of mine into painting. The life that surrounds me gets into my art. For me it is important to do well in every role - as a wife, a mother and an artist - but I don't deny myself anything in the process."

She does confess to making mistakes in the process of her work and if a work is not satisfactory she will discard it. "Admitting your mistake is the most important part of life. I draw boundaries for myself but very often I would like to step out of them. In fact if I am successful in breaking the boundaries with positive results, I will never look back."

Manisha Gera Baswani is one of our talented emerging artists, having shown in major Indian galleries and received prestigious scholarships and awards from Indian and foreign governments.

Her works were brought for the first time to South India by Apparao Galleries, Chennai.