Canvassing a new tune

Correia's digital artwork

Around five years ago, guitarist Randolph Correia started battling demons that came out from the shadows of his sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll lifestyle. So he turned a little away from his music, looking for a light from the darkness. "I needed a giant refresh button," he says, realising that enough is enough, and that it was time for a change. He asked himself, "How do I transcend this life? How do I keep these desires from pulling me down? The musician's life starts to eat you up after a while. It's unreal. It leads you astray. And the question was: How do I find peace within myself?"

The answer lay partly in the fine arts. The 43-year-old tells us that not many people know that he was in his fourth year at Sir JJ School of Art when he joined veteran rock band Pentagram, kicking off a life on the road. Till then, he'd been juggling music and painting. Art world heavyweights like Jitish Kallat and Riyas Komu were his contemporaries. Bose Krishnamachari was their mentor. And while in college, Correia was looking to use art as a tool to chisel his music. But the more he toured after joining Pentagram, the more he travelled away from his paintings, until five years ago, when the musician turned back towards art to come to terms with
his demons.

He is now hosting an online exhibition called Shirtless on the Method Arts Space's website, and Correia tells us that the combination of art and music involves two senses working from the same brain. He talks about how there's music in the silence of an art gallery and how - just like visuals create a sonic element - songs, too, paint pictures in your brain. It can be a memory from your life, or just a thought in your head. "But it takes you somewhere, because it's all connected. That's why art and music is one of the best combinations, like the chai and vada pav vibe," Correia says.

The exhibition consists of drawings and digital artworks that are sometimes laced with sexuality. Music, of course, is another recurring theme. Many of them were selected from hundreds of pieces that Correia made when, in his own words, he started using art as therapy to deal with his depression. It was a way for him to heal. And in a sense then, if art is indeed like chai, his has the healing properties of ginger in it, considering how the medium helped the guitarist soothe the existential fever raging within.

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