Vasant Wankhede (1936-2019) formed his visual vocabulary dedicated to silence in order to open an ear to the field of human vision.

In his paintings one sees rags being transformed into colours, stains into aesthetic areas. Bandage not covering the wound but revealing the inner lustre of the feeling the artist has cared for. One may imagine their marks left in between some scratches, or stuck with the loose threads hanging from the contour of a pasted piece of cloth serving as a lone reminiscence. At one moment one can easily identify the material used by the artist to disclose his artistic merits, but such a state of identification does not last for long, as the same pushes further for an unusually stunning experience. It enters into a journey where one can experience the inseparability of matter and spirit inquisitively, explored by a beholder of creative impulses and keen craftsmanship.

He locates and refers himself very often to his surroundings, each thing minor or major, significant or insignificant becomes the instrumental device for his sojourn. He goes deep into his idiom and separates form from its usual function while infusing in it the lasting aesthetic behavior, simple and pure. He migrates from one object to another like an exponent, or from one type of material to another like a researcher and thus carefully inquiring the unexposed possibilities for visual expression. Such a continuous migration has been his working for years, which he terms as silent communication.

Nature has always remained as ‘warp’ in the fabric of culture and man with his creative ability has been passing through it as ‘weft’ since ages. Here is one of those who senses the innermost meaning of life and tries to convert it into a visual aesthetic joy without much fuss about it. He invents it in a simplistic manner, the unnoticed images stuffed into vivid materials, and boldly puts them next to silence in his pictorial space. For him art material does not exist separately and therefore whatever is accessible as a medium, he uses with aesthetic inclination.

The artist in question has truly remained a watch tower, undisturbed for years despite the tides that have come and gone with changing time.

You may not find his signature on his paintings, but such a kind of an absence speaks for the presence of the artist who has given to the paintings his eyes, his breath, his blood, his yesterday, today and tomorrow, his joy and sorrow, all and everything except his name – Vasant Wankhede.