“I couldn’t sew, so I thought, let me do something different. I started pasting scraps of fabrics on a canvas, got hooked to it and fell in love with the art form.”
Dr Dattatreya Phadke visited an art exhibition in the state of Michigan in United States, where he saw some beautiful art quilts put on display. Curiosity got the better of Phadke who couldn’t stop himself from asking the artist about her process. The artist said she used a fabric as a base, and sewed different fabrics onto it. This was where Phadke drew inspiration and decided to use fabric as a medium of his art.
From his first fabric collage — a fall scene inspired by the colours of autumn, which a batchmate gifted to a friend in Germany — to solo art exhibitions in Mumbai and Pune, Phadke spoke to The Indian Express about his evolution as an artist.
“As I started developing, my art pieces became more realistic and more detailed. They created a paint-free painting-like effect,” said Phadke proudly adding that most of the people visiting the art galleries where he puts up his creations mistake fabrics for paint. He asks the vistors to take a closer look to show its all fabric and no paint.
Phadke’s artworks have been currently put on display at his solo art exhibition ‘Rangbahar at the Darpan Art Gallery, Senapati Bapat Road, between 11am and 7pm from August 22 to 27.
Besides being a fabric collage artist, Phadke is also a practising pathologist, which he says can be taxing. Fabric collages, for him, are a stress buster. “It is relaxing and everyone needs something like this. We all have a creative side and age is no barrier to begin to explore it,” he said.
Phadke uses discarded pieces of scraps for his artwork, which would otherwise end up in landfills. As a child, he did watercolour paintings and made greeting cards. Then, he grew up to teach himself the use of different types of fabrics such as silk for glow, laces to make window curtains, polyesters, etc to make a 3D fabric collage. Apart from the woman artist in Michigan who inspired Phadke to choose fabric as his medium of art, the women in his family, especially his aunts who made beautiful quilts, spurred his creative edge.
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Most of his artwork is landscapes, some of them abstract. Since he doesn’t do it full time, it takes Phadke 15 days to complete a detailed landscape and mostly works on his artworks on weekends. A small abstract artwork though, he can complete in two to three days.
One of his fabric collages, ‘In flight’ beautifully portrays the swift motion of swallows going in swirls.
Another collage ‘Spring in Himachal’ was inspired from the blossom he saw during his recent trip to Himachal Pradesh.
