Observations made by Harvey Hood
March 2003

Ganesh has used our facility more productively than any other artist in our whole history. No one has worked so hard, using every minute of time making sculpture, painting and drawing. While sculpture processes need time to set he would return to his room to produce more drawings.

His work is influenced from more sources than his native Assam. Most European art is dominated by an overdeveloped concentration of academic theoreticians writing on the conceptual element at the expense of not allowing the presence and spirit of the work to speak for itself. Ganesh's sculptures seem to have 'inner being' or a spirit of their own. This I believe is achieved through the endless time he nurses his sculpture into life. His deep religious beliefs and Eastern philosophical tradition make his work conceptually different. Ganesh fuses his own personal relationship to his father with a love of nature. He does not use the superficial mythologized clichés that we are used to.

Ganesh has been living and making sculptures at Berllanderi for the past four months and has become part of our family.He works like a trained athlete - experimenting and taking on new influences, digesting them, and then perfecting the process of his execution. I remember visiting a museum in the South of France where Picasso had worked for a year. As you went from painting to painting with dates only a few days apart you would see some motifs repeated and new ideas developing. Moving along the walls the paintings developed in such a way, from day to day, that you felt you were with Picasso in his decision-making.

I was a little surprised when Ganesh started modelling a large foot similar to one he had made in India. There is a need for all artists to quickly fill a space with work to demonstrate who they are, but as the modelling was nearing completion, I was aware that this work was more than moving your mind to another culture, it was a confirmation of the idea and a testing piece. While ideas developed and some of the processes took time to dry and set, he would work on drawing and paintings, not as substitute for making sculpture, but on parallel ideas to their own media. Ideas fed each other, interweaving from sculpture to painting to drawing, similar to my own experience of seeing Picasso's daily process in the South of France.

The work that Ganesh produced has its roots in the suitcase be brought with him to Berllanderi as you would expect, but through his athletic rigour he has developed new ideas, which were not pre-conceived. I believe this is a significant body of work and I am grateful to him for enlightening me in an area of spirituality that I have long neglected.

(The writer is a Sculptor and Director of Berllanderi Sculpture Workshop, UK)