Ahmedabad-based artist Tejas Soni reflects on five decades of living artfully—across painting, sculpture, wildlife and street photography—navigating doubt, discipline, nature, and change, while discovering that creative freedom is earned, not granted.

Edited by: Khalid Mohamed  

Some comforting childhood memories stay with us because they have quietly, and perhaps inadvertently shaped our latent strengths.

Born to a goldsmith’s family in Ahmedabad, as a five or six-year-old, I would sketch images of Lord Krishna, which my mother would marvel at for their exactness and details. Simultaneously I would caricature portraits of Amitabh Bachchan, looking angry as he did in the posters of Zanjeer and Deewaar.

But neither my closest friends nor schoolteachers thought that such drawings were a cut above the ordinary. They would look at my hands, especially my fingers, and airily say that artists are supposed to have long fingers, and mine were small if not stubby. I’d be told to forget about becoming an artist which must have been a subconscious desire. At that age, I didn’t quite get it – how can creativity depend on the size of a palm?

Anger, Resolve, and Family Expectations

As I grew up, there was this anger bottled up within me. I would be resentful about their disapproval, for being judgemental about my little big dreams, which every child is entitled to. Why did imagination need physical mandates? That kind of confusion didn’t weaken my resolve to draw, paint and sketch on paper, on the blank pages of text books, wherever. Gradually, that instinct for doing something creative turned into a stubborn determination.

Noticing that I was becoming sullen and distant, my parents did become supportive, which at least give me an iota of confidence.

Nevertheless my father, a government employee – an inspector of schools – kept hoping I would become an engineer. For him, a trained engineer meant stability and security. To respect that expectation, I joined an engineering college but felt a deep sense of incompleteness.

While attending classes, I was preoccupied with visual ideas. At college, I would sit diligently at my desk with notebooks open, but the pages would be littered with doodles and pencil and ink sketches. That constant urge toward art couldn’t be silenced. Still there was that uncertainty about how to strike a balance between my aspirations and responsibilities as a son from a middle class family.

Once, I asked my art teacher to instruct me in shading. He looked at my drawing and said, “First learn how to draw correctly. Shading will come later.” That dismissive sentence stayed with me. It wasn’t meant to discourage, it was about discipline.

I understood that form must exist before light can touch it. I carried that advice forward in my own way. Instead of rushing toward effects, I focused on structure, proportion and observation.

Learning, Teaching, and Foundations

As I studied the works of the great masters—Rembrandt, Vincent Van Gogh, Michelangelo, Caravaggio, Jacob Van Ruisdael, Johannes Vermeer, Annibale Carracci, Peter Paul Rubens and Henry Moore—I began sharing whatever I had learned with others.

Next, teaching became an extension of learning. By explaining form, volume and anatomy, I understood that I could mature only with a strong foundation in world art.

During this phase, I continued to draw, sketch without taking any tuitions. Instead, I began giving them. Teaching others forced clarity. Without realising it, guiding students shaped my own fundamental approach which was beyond the realm of formal training.

At a time when print media and visual references were limited, I spent long hours reading English literature. While reading, I began creating painted replicas inspired by literary stories and plays like say, Shakespeare’s Macbeth. That taught me observation, and the patience required to stay with a single image for long periods.

Beyond two-dimensional surfaces, sculpture also attracted me since it allows form to exist in real space. However, I had no studio, no clear guidance, and no roadmap on how to begin. Instead of waiting for ideal conditions, I started working with available materials. This led me toward ferrocement murals which were physically and technically demanding exercises. Sculpture is not only about expression but also about balance, strength, and responsibility toward shaping the material.

Streets, Pols, and the Human Eye

As a young artist, I would sketch for hours in the old pols of Ahmedabad. Sitting quietly in narrow lanes, observing buildings and people, I drew architectural details and human figures. This trained my eye naturally. Later, when I began exploring photography, this self-training became invaluable.

Architectural photography felt intuitive because I already understood perspective. Street photography felt familiar because human presence had always been central to my sketches.

Nature as Mentor

As for my relationship with nature, it began through outdoor sketching. I would go out to draw trees, landscapes, and open spaces.

Inevitably, this gave me an impetus to photographing wild life. Obviously, I could not explore the myriad forms of art simultaneously, which can result in mediocrity. Thus, wild life photography became a priority.

Wild life also introduced me to vulnerability. There were moments when life felt genuinely fragile. Many times, I found myself alone deep inside forests during mountain hikes. One misstep and I could be tumbling down a steep mountain slope. The prospect of returning home alive itself became perilous and frightening. Those moments were not dramatic—they were instructive.

Believe me, never underestimate nature, respect it. Wildlife does not test bravery; it teaches humility. While crawling slowly to photograph a wader, I was so focused on composition that I did not notice a highly venomous common krait lying dangerously close. What saved me were the frantic alarm calls of a red-wattled lapwing and black-winged stilts. Their warning pulled me back to the present. If one listens carefully, nature always speaks before it strikes.

Photography and Listening

Photographing the endless shades of the temple town of Pushkar, near Ajmer, was another experience altogether. Back in 2009, while photographing the sand dunes I overheard a heated argument between two camel herders. One of them said, “Don’t be so sweet that the camels may swallow you up for breakfast, and don’t be so bitter that someone spits you out.” Moved by the simplicity of that thought, I realised photography is not only about images—it is also about listening.

My style, if I may call it that, towards street photography has been slightly unusual. I prefer maintaining a distance, often using a long lens. I observe quietly, allowing moments to unfold naturally rather than intervening in the sights right before my eyes. Perhaps this comes from years of wild life practice, where a certain distance is essential.

The journey across art forms was extremely arduous. Transitioning from painting to sculpting and then to wildlife photography was fraught with financial insecurities, self-doubts, and the peer pressure to justify unconventional choices.

What appears to be smooth on the surface has undercurrents of the fear of failure.

Music, Healing, and Digital Frontiers

Through it all, sketching remained my foundation. Music, too—through the flute and harmonica—added rhythm and balance to my overall personality. My short fingers, no longer, seemed to be an impediment.

During the COVID period, when the world slowed down, I learnt digital sketching, stepping into unfamiliar territory once again. After two years of sustained practice, I presented my first digital painting exhibition, Nirvana. Around the same time, I wrote Elegy to Sadness, a book that explored art as therapy—how creativity helps to process emotions when words fall short.

In the event, I have given my only son, Lay, complete freedom to choose his own path. Today, he practices tattoo art and runs the White Snake Tattoo studio in Ahmedabad. After all, every vocation flourishes when it is supported, not imposed.

Today, through wild life photography workshops, sketch-in-nature sessions, and painting workshops, I focus on sharing rather than defining.

Art and the Future

We must reflect on how art is valued or undervalued in our eco-system. India once created wonders like the Kailasa Temple, Khajuraho, the Modhera Sun Temple, and Rani ki Vav—structures born from imagination and devotion. Today, we often replace beauty with convenience, building landscapes of tin, glass, and concrete.

Perhaps the need of our time is not only to move forward, but also to look inward—into our own timeline—and remember that art and beauty are under constant evolution.

I see digital technology—and now AI—not as a threat, but as one more medium being explored by the now generation. I have never been afraid of the new. Every meaningful phase of my life has come from venturing into uncharted terrains.

Artificial Intelligence, like any tool, responds to intention. It does not replace human experience. The future of creativity lies in the collaboration between human sensitivity and rapidly-altering technology. Instead of scoffing at AI the saner option is to be curious about its potential.

I once read a simple line, “Change will happen, whether you like it or not.” Growth, like art, begins the moment we stop holding on and allow transformation to shape us.

Today at the age of 53, I may have given you the unintentional impression that an artist must be a Jack of all trades, but a master of none. That would be far from the truth. Rather in this context, the words of Pablo Picasso resonate, “The artist is a receptacle for emotions that come from all over the place: from the sky, from the earth, from a scrap of paper, from a passing shape, from a spider’s web.”

So, just do it.

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