Art is meant to be challenging. It is unfamiliar to the layman on the street; sometimes uninteresting and on other occasions, bewildering. This writer was reminded of Michelangelo’s words: ‘It is necessary to keep one’s compass in one’s eyes and not in the hand, for the hands execute, but the eye judges,’ as he walked into a quiet lane in Colaba for a sneak peek of Anjolie The Wanton Fabulist that opens at Art Musings today. In the same week where an 82-year-old Hayao Miyazaki won his first Golden Globe, Anjolie Ela Menon returns to Mumbai with a collection of works that range from divine to mortal; all touched by grace.

“I have always been a figurative painter. It is difficult not to be one in such an overpopulated country,” the artist jests over a phone call. To categorise Anjolie Ela Menon as a simple figurative painter would be injustice. Yet, the figures are important. They compel you to react. As the artist explains herself, “There is a dominance [of figures], and women, in my work. Even in the landscapes, with only a chair or a charpoy, it is a moment after they have left the frame. There is an absence of the person, if not the presence.”