“I never imagined I would be doing ceramics; I really got involved in it in 1994 when I was in Holland. It was actually prompted by my Bombay-based friend Haridas, who was very ill and had told me, " Next time you go to Europe I would like to go with you," It was a wish I was very keen to fulfil. So when the opportunity came, soon after, to go on a four month fellowship (May' August, 1994), to the European Ceramic Centre at Hertogenbosch, some 40 kms south of Rotterdam, in Holland, I grabbed it and made arrangements for my friend to travel with me.

“I had never worked with ceramics before… My initial work at the Ceramic Centre was very bad. Everything looked like the small dummy bags used in war for target practice. Within fifteen days I destroyed all of it. It was then that I started my ceramic portrait series, specifically the blue portraits.

“What I really like about the medium is the element of surprise. The real excitement, for me, starts from the point you start applying glaze colour. After being licked by the flames, what emerges is never what you expected. It is a kind of 'difference' which you cannot really anticipate. It is an experience somewhat like working in the dark. All sorts of accidents happen and you discover it is a medium in which you, the 'artist as creator', does not have much control… So it is a medium in which one need not take instant decisions. Doing figurative work in ceramics excites me greatly.”

Bhupen Khakhar, interviewed by Sadanand Menon, taken from Vadehra Art Gallery’s exhibition catalogue, Bhupen Khakhar, Ceramics and Watercolour, December 1996 – January 1997