You don't interview Laxma Goud. You let him talk and jot down the notes. What would you ask a restless artist who doesn't mind switching styles, switching media, switching perspectives whose mind has the sharpness of a quenched and hammered Samurai sword? In an art world where artists find a style and then stick to it for a lifetime, Laxma Goud experiments. And in the process, tests himself, redefines the boundaries of his art, teases the viewer, and ensures that he remains a free artist who can do what he wants to do. His thirst for kala remains unquenched.
Laxma Goud's tryst with art began when he volunteered to draw the map of India as a class 6 student. “The school headmaster was passing by the classroom at 11 a.m. when he saw me, a small student in shorts, standing on a chair and drawing the likeness of India from memory. I was too busy to notice the headmaster as I was focussed on the drawing at hand. It was spontaneous and proportional. A few days later my headmaster named me as the best student of the school and I got a box of crayons and pencils as a gift. Perhaps that set me on the course of becoming an artist,” says Laxma Goud on the lawns of his Jubilee Hills home where a duck and drake quack loudly once in a while as his grandchildren pose for photographs.
Wearing shorts and a T-shirt, adjusting his photochromatic glasses over his nose, Laxma flits from the past to the present, from politics to colours, and to everything, he brings an aesthete's eye and the pragmatism of someone born in Nizampur in Medak. In 1958, Laxma joined Hyderabad School of Fine Arts. “It was a different culture. People led a leisurely life, speaking Urdu, drinking Irani chai and listening to gramophone records. Independence changed everything,” says Laxma who remembers the crucible of his creativity.
“I made a decision to find my sustenance on my own and we three artists: me, Devarajan and Suryaprakash hired a place in a lawyer's garage in Himayatnagar. I would sleep on the floor, in one corner was a toilet. Dabba mida kuchoni work chesanu (I would sit on a box and draw). Drawing was my basic tool and I used to do ink drawings on small pieces of paper gifted by Jagdish Mittal,” says Laxma remembering the time when food was an occasional luxury but the hunger and thirst was for soul food. “Life and art are inseparable. Every aspect of life is art. Fine art becomes the highest degree of human experience,” says Laxma. “When I was struggling there was nothing like an art gallery. Lalit Kala Akademi and Hyderabad Art Society were the two organisations that promoted art,” he says.
For someone who never forgets a friend or a favour, K.G. Subramanyam stands out like an incandescent beacon for Laxma Goud. “After my diploma here I went to study at Baroda School of Fine Arts where K.G. Subramanyam took me under his wing.
And it was something. Bendre would see my work and would show it to everyone about the wonderful effort. Subramanyam would nod his head. He could make me cry with his criticism. He could cut up your effort to shreds without you realising it,” says Laxma who discovered his oeuvre while working under this teacher. Frescoes, murals, sandcasting, etching, printing, drawing, painting…you name it and Laxma has worked in the medium.
Digambaras, he calls them. A period when Laxma created works with subtle and not so subtle undercurrent of sexuality inspired by his environment. The colours were lush, luscious and the images throbbing with life and libidinal forces. They became his signature style but erotica was not for the sake of effect, he brought the same stylisation and draughtsmanship to mirrors, cloth, etchings and line drawings. The colours became lines. Sitting in a yogic pose, on the edge of a lawn, Laxma looks like an unlikely teacher. But he is. Laxma has helped many art students walk the steps to become artists in their own right. “I want my students to learn from experience, from other artists. So that they know what they are and find their own style,” he says.
“Everyday is a new style, new freedom for me,” says Laxma. His unbending spirit can be grasped from the fact that he worked on graphics at Doordarshan for 15 years. “Everyone thought that I am finished, but I wasn't. I refused to become a clerk. People ask ‘ lunch ainda, lunch break ainda' ? Nobody asks what did you do before lunch. I had the question. I never lost that focus,” says Laxma who learnt from the experiences of Santiniketan group as well as the Progressive Artists Group. Through all his efforts he has strived for his individualistic expression. “I was stubborn. You don't care what others do. You have to have your own ideas and an intellect that is not swayed by what other say,” says Laxma.
