Shakila Sheikh with her mentor Bal Raj Panesar. Picture by Sanat Kr Sinha

Usual questions about style, subject or contextual references in her art do not draw stock answers from Shakila Sheikh.

Technicalities — even the process of creation — play a minimal role in the larger picture of Shakila’s stunningly individual visual language. “I create images, I do not understand the ‘meaning’ of art,” she offers with characteristic reticence.

This simplicity defines Shakila, one of the finest collage artists of her generation, in life as much as in art. While her creations have been showcased in every major gallery in the country and abroad, Shakila still works out of her home in the hamlet of Nurgram, near Lakshmikantapur in South 24-Parganas.

Like every rural homemaker, her home and hearth take up much of her time. And then there is her art, usually created at night once the day’s chores are done.

Like other everyday supplies, paper is precious in the Sheikh household; every bit of scrap is neatly stored should it serve a purpose in the layered collages that portray life as the 40-plus mother of two knows and interprets it.

Often, that interpretation morphs into startling revelations on the world around her. Recognition is appreciated, but never striven for.

And recognition has come her way in due time: the 2005 Charukala Award by the Academy of Dance, Music and Visual Art in West Bengal; the Lalit Kala Akademi felicitation in 2003; the Sanskriti Award in 2002; the honour of a Special Commission for the Gramin Bank installation for the International Trade Fair at Hanover, Germany, in 2000 and the national scholarship of the human resource development ministry from 1993 to 1995.

On July 9, Shakila was honoured with the STAR Ananda Shera Bangali 2010 award.

On the eve of STAR Ananda’s glittering awards ceremony at Science City auditorium, Shakila was her usual calm self, at home in the dining room of the YMCA’s Taltola branch. This is where her mentor, artist Bal Raj Panesar, has been in permanent residence since the Sixties. Shakila calls the octogenarian artist, a landscape and collage pioneer, “baba”. “She is my daughter,” says Panesar.

The veteran artist first saw Shakila as a seven-year-old in the late 70s, when she would accompany her mother to Calcutta to sell vegetables. Panesar would walk down SN Banerjee Road, distributing chocolates to neighbourhood children, and also pencils and pieces of paper to encourage them to draw.

Most doodles didn’t catch his eye, but Shakila’s stood out. “Even at that age, there was a spark in her works,” recalls Panesar. Well-respected as a teacher, Panesar took Shakila under his wings, taking her to exhibitions in various art galleries around town.

While the drawings were mainly pencil-on-paper and thus in monochrome, the exhibitions were an eye-opener for her. “The first time I saw paintings, I was overwhelmed by colours. I had no idea that these many shades even existed,” smiles Shakila.

Getting married to Akbar Sheikh at 16, Shakila continued to vend vegetables with her husband. Making ends meet was difficult, so Panesar offered the couple paper to make thongas and earn some more. Shakila used the paper to make collages, which “came naturally”, creating images from her everyday rural life.

Soon after, Panesar gave her coloured paper which she started incorporating in her collages. The introduction to colours and their varied tonalities transformed Shakila’s works. Panesar’s layered approach to landscape also left a marked influence on Shakila’s earlier oeuvre; his collage-like oils and acrylic-on-canvas works mirrored in earlier pastoral works by his protégé.

The early works were all done on cardboard; it was only in the late 90s that Shakila starting working on smaller canvases. The size of works gradually increased; by the time her first solo exhibition was organised at the CIMA Gallery in 2008, Shakila was working with 8’x12’ canvases.

Her subjects, too, underwent a change. Shakila’s early works reflected her rural reality; later on, the pastoral images gave way to darker interpretations, of looking at the larger world outside while expressing the emotive responses from within. The recurrence of the goddess Kali as a metaphor for strength, of a basket full of eggs that are bombs, of women being harassed — these were images that looked inwards.

“Her evolution as an artist has been this process of looking into her heart, unlike, say, Dayanita Singh’s, who explores the inner spaces of her mind,” says Pratiti Sarkar of CIMA. Her technique changed to incorporate watercolour-like chiaroscuro; each torn fragment of paper was meticulously chosen to give rise to a new whole. “None of the paper pieces that she chooses are selected at random; Shakila literally hunts for the perfect piece for each work,” says Pratiti.

Her vibrant tonal palette apart, Shakila also moved away from Panesar’s influence, shaping her individualist style, especially in regard to forms and lines.

In more recent times, Shakila has been experimenting with papier mache as a collage medium, creating her own material with soaked paper mixed with glue.

At present, she is working on a solo exhibition. “The mark of a true artist is creating every day, no matter what. For Shakila, a day’s work done is past, awards et al. It’s tomorrow that remains a constant,” says Panesar.