If we look at the age-old traditional way of making art, it usually starts with a white canvas accompanied by colourful strokes and colours. For Sheetal Gattani, an alumna of Sir JJ School of Art, the process is slightly different, as it begins in black. With her solo exhibition, Harvesting Light, curated by Anurag Khanna, she brings together works spanning more than three decades, from 1991 to her more recent paintings, bringing together different stages of her artistic practice.

Our first question was, ‘Why the colour black?’ To which Gattani explains that black isn’t simply a colour but the starting point. “I use the black as my base point to start off with, funnily enough, when I work with a white canvas, it gives me stage fright.”