Atul Dodiya

Photo courtesy Bodhi Arts

Atul Dodiya, "Sabari shaking Mondrian"

Photo courtesy Bodhi Arts

Atul Dodiya, "The Wet Sleeves of My Paper Robe" at Bodhi Arts

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There are many mes within me. Theres not a single Atul. So the question I faced early in my career is, should I allow this? Should I let these many selves explode within my artwork? The answer, of course, was yes, and it came when I was doing a portrait of my father, and I asked myself, What if I paint him almost like a billboard?" There was tension with this choice, because you are not painting a film star, you are painting your own father: If I do it this way, what will happen?

But once I said I can do it, and once I did it, the fear went away because there was something very unusual and exciting visually in what I was creating. So since then I told myself, when Im painting in my studio, I just simply do my work without any fear. There is a lot of risk and courage. Although Im very traditional and conventional in my normal routine, I feel that the studio is my kingdom, and in the space in which I am painting, the canvas or the paper, I have the freedom to do what I want.

Jacquelyn Lewis provided additional reporting for this article.