Osborne Carvalho

Apparently  Osborne Carvalho’s earliest brush with art came when he was barely 10, when his school teacher scolded him for drawing graffiti on a school road following a tiff between friends. “You are too young to use those words,” she rebuked him.

Osborne’s degree in Fine Arts took him to Mumbai where he worked in the advertising line but eventually got weary of it. Back in Goa, he worked at an arts academy before moving on to creating murals and installation art. Osborne’s enthusiasm about the arts and the stories they tell is seen in his artwork which demands that the viewer not just looks at art but interacts with it, questions and reacts to it.

For me the process of an artwork starts while closely observing people at the local café, or by the beach, while travelling or maybe at a clinic. My mind makes fleeting sketches on these subjects, their style, intense engrossment, intoxicated gossip and at times that overheated conversation, completes my painting at the studio. One such line, “Where is Shanti?” led me to produce this series of work. Savouring a dessert by the beachside is “Shanti” for a Russian tourist. For a teenager “Shanti” is a pornstar, for a group of students watching Miss Shanti is bliss. In my work Shanti is ageless, joyful, sinful, kinky and fun.