Alphonso Doss

"Every time I actually approach a canvas, I am face to face with a paradox. I must paint at one go."

Alphonso Arul Doss was raised in Bangalore as a child and attended St. Joseph's School there after being born in a Christian home there in 1939. Growing up, his involvement in church-related activities had a significant impact on his paintings. "When I turned to look up at a Gothic church's stained-glass window, I was struck by how the light had been changed into patterns. The shapes and colors drew me in and inspired me to consider making forms that would resemble gemstones that reflect a variety of facets. (Artist cited in Sujatha Shankar Kumar's article "Six Decades of Art," available online at The Hindu on March 10, 2014) His paintings are renowned for their purposefully left-out blank, white canvas spaces that mirror the flow of light through priceless stones.

The Madras Government College of Arts and Crafts, where Doss later served as principal from 1992 to 1997, awarded him a diploma in fine art. He was instructed to study and absorb European realism and art, much like his peers. But with time, his portraits and representations began to incorporate Western aesthetic elements with Indian themes, as seen in his recreation of Rembrandt's picture Christ And The Woman Taken In Adultery, in which Doss depicted Gandhi in a temple in a more abstract form. The artist draws inspiration from temples, churches, palaces, museums, and other artists from throughout the world for his body of work, which investigates and reimagines the history and vocabulary of religious and classical painting.

Doss' canvases are made by smearing wet oil paint loosely so that the color is not opaque, and his color palette is limited to hues of olive green, brown, and primary colors. He works quickly, leaving blank spaces and hasty sketches. He uses a particular technique in his pencil and charcoal works to produce refraction and a distinctive dance of light and shadow. "I don't delete. When anything went awry, I drew a young man's form with overlapping textures and colours. However, I didn't remove any lines. (Kumar quotes an artist)

In 1997, Alphonso Doss helped to conceptualize and found Chennai's Museum of Contemporary Art. He has a home and a job in Chennai.