A life-like Marilyn Monroe portrait looks from the corner of her doe eyes. A replica of the iconic Bob Marley photograph, a portrait of Joker, with his magnetic eyes leaves you transfixed while a portrait of M.S. Subbulakshmi, looks like a moment captured in a photograph.
These portraits are unique not just for their fine work, but also for the fact that they are all made of coffee. Yes, coffee in deep and light browns.
Light and shade, depth and dimension mark all the paintings. It is difficult to believe that the creator of these portraits, Dheeraj Gadicherla, aka Distractor, hasn’t any formal training in art.
Bengaluru-based Dheeraj re-kindled his passion for painting, after he quit his job in 2012. “I used to paint as a kid. Then there was a 20-year-gap. I took a year-and-a-half off from my job in 2012, and found some time to paint. I used the same palette and brushes, with which I used to paint as a child. It was while re-arranging my cupboard that I found them.”
Deepti Navaratna, a classical singer from Bengaluru, bought Dheeraj’s first painting of M.S. Subbulakshmi, in watercolours and gold painting.
His first coffee art work was a portrait of his friend. “She didn’t like it!” he laughs, “But I took it up as a challenge.” And it paid off.
Most of The Distractor’s coffee art work has been bought by customers abroad. And his work includes not just celebrities, but portraits of his friends and relatives. He has planned a series of portraits of his niece, for example.
“I am tracking her growth through my paintings. There is one portrait in coffee, one in toothpaste, one more in chocolate and coffee. And I am planning one on glass, using coffee,” he says.
“I was a hyper kid, and used to disrupt everything on my way. And my favourite uncle said, ‘he’s a distractor,” and that’s how the name Distractor stuck.
Dheeraj, who works as an EHS Manager with Motorola and has a Masters in Industrial safety and Ergonomics from the University of Utah, speaks of the different steps to painting in coffee.
“I first sketch in pencil, which takes me three to four hours. Painting with coffee takes about three to four hours. And the coffee takes two days to dry. I then apply four layers of lacquer, and that takes about half a day to dry.”
Dheeraj is also a biker and an avid traveller, having backpacked to the North-East and done a round trip from Kashmir to Kanyakumari on his motorcycle and back. A boat ride on the Ganges was particularly memorable for Dheeraj.
“I was on the Ganges for 10 days. On the one hand, I met a chai wala who makes Rs. 1,000 a month. His father pulled a rickshaw for 27 years in Delhi and built a temple. On the other hand, I stayed with a British man and his sister, in their eighties, in Mirzapur, who are waited on by 62 staff!”