MOHAN VERNEKAR

When it comes to art, patience is the artist's watchword. And dot art calls for a triple fold dose of patience. Ask Mohan Vernekar, the city's renowned dot artist. His compilation of dot portraits of Kannada literary scholars reveals his talent and keen power of observation. These litterateurs include Jnanapeetha awardees, Kendra Sahitya Academy award winners, Pampa and Attimabbe award winners and other highly acclaimed writers and critics.

Vernekar's romance with dot portraiture began around twenty-five years ago, in March 1974. Senior scholar Maasti Venkatesha Iyengar, seeing his own portrait done in dots, complimented Mohan's skills and said, "Your work remains incomplete by portraying me alone; there are many other litterateurs in Kannada whom you have to consider." Since then, Mohan has tried to capture many of the literary giants and ultimately succeeded in coming out with a book of all those portraits on October 24, 1999.

Why only dot portraits? He answers modestly, "I was fascinated when I identified millions of dots knit into an image when I observed it through a lens. That got me into working on dots in pen to create an image that looked natural. I could come out with portraits that have the natural appearance of a photograph only after a lot of experiments."

"There was also a need for portraits of some senior Kannada litterateurs whose photos were not available through any source, including the Kannada Sahitya Parishat. As an ardent admirer of those literary scholars, I thought of fulfilling my dream of compiling the dot portrait book 'Shata Saahitya Prathibhe' (One hundred literary talents) with a profile of each of them."

Mohan Vernekar received financial assistance from New York's Kannada Sahithya Koota and Infosys Foundation to bring out his book at Rs 200 per copy, a price that is affordable to the common man. Vernekar is also grateful to Prof L S Sheshagiri Rao and Vyasaraya Ballal who helped him in getting the profile of the litterateurs.

Recalling his efforts in bringing out the book, Vernekar says, "It was a Herculean task that took more than a year. I feel really contended. It is the culmination of twenty-five years of hard work. Each portrait required 18 to 20 hours to complete. I dedicated my free hours after office work for that."

Dot portrait has been a passion for Vernekar, who is an official reporter for the Karnataka legislative Assembly. This dot artist is a writer too! Though writing short stories is what he enjoys most (having three story collections to his credit), he has also published four novels. Another area of interest is children's literature. He has penned many poems and stories for children. Looks like there are no full stops in Mohan Vernekar's life.