CHENNAI: Sophie Jo says India will never stop inspiring her till the day she dies. And it’s evident from her latest collection of art that people are what she enjoys painting most. “I paint for at least eight hours every day,” she says, “Maybe because I don’t have much of a social life, all these people pop up in my paintings,” she laughs.As we walk around the Apparao Gallery in Nungambakkam, everyday sights come to life in her paintings — a man and his wife balancing watermelons as they vroom away on a motorcycle, a fisherman guiding a colourful boat to the shore. The French artist recounts, “I once had chai with a fisherman and his family on the Marina beach,” and she adds in awe, “They are such generous people. They always offer to share what little they have”.As a travelling painter, over the last two decades, Jo has made many places her home — Brazil, Italy, Denmark, Thailand and now India. But her sojourn of six years in Uthandi has been the longest yet.She admits that the city doesn’t inspire her much, but just one glance at people drinking tea in a street stall or the sight of a sari-clad village woman with immaculately plaited hair can strike a chord with her. “It’s images like these that inspire my ‘People of the World’ series,” she reveals. The series showcases individual categories from businessmen to lovers to babies — all with identities defined purely by the backs of their heads.Then there is a Gandhian series or, as Jo likes to call it, L’homme (The Man), with multiple works, each with a silhouette of Gandhi and his walking stick. “But I wasn’t even thinking of Gandhi when I started painting this,” she recalls. “Something guided me to create them,” the artist says, attributing her work to some form of divine assistance. Unlike a regular silhouette that is seen as a shadow, these works of art are ‘painted in’ with people — some with youthful traces of pop art, others with more subtle colouring. “It’s one Gandhi for each generation,” Jo smiles. When asked about her next project, Jo says she has butterflies in her stomach just thinking about it. But that is all she reveals for now. She does add, “One part of India that I would love to visit and paint is Rajasthan, especially during the annual camel fair.
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