STATEMENT BY THE ARTIST 

          I have chosen, adopted and moulded paper pulp as the mother tongue for my creative visual expression.  My works have physical textures and dimensions.  I live my life and tread this universe for the birth of compulsions for my expression. 

          Surfaces which invite me to look at, smell and feel by moving hands over these with purposeful analytical thoughts; to understand the structure, character of the material, colour, arrangement of various elements, natural or altered with human intervention become a starting point for my work.  The environment in which you have lived or living, witnessed the changes, brought in by various factors, for years together, through all seasons, leave various abstract impressions.  These impressions linger on in my mind.  These oscillate like a pendulum of the eternal clock of the life cycle.  These impressions prompt to concentrating my thoughts and energies for creativity. 

          My work is like impressions of the surfaces, of the field left by a moving plough or of cracks created by the scorching heat on the mud or of foot prints on the wet sand left on the sea shore or of the wounds created by the savage axe on the tree trunk or of the dry leaves of ‘neem' in the summer afternoon or of traversing aimlessly on the roads of an unknown city or ripples created in the water. 

          The paper pulp casts lifted from the moulds either found, arranged or created, leave the mark or echo in these.  The paper pulp also gives me enough time to deal with various changes, I intend, in the process of dyeing the pulp, casting and giving final touches to the pulp casts. 

Dattatraya Apte

2^nd October, 2005