A TASTE of Indian culture will be coming to Maldon with an exhibition later this month.

Shanti Panchal’s A way of Watercolour will be at Hayletts Gallery from next Saturday.

Panchal, who has friends in Maldon, often visited the town several times a year and had Hayletts Gallery recommended by a friend.

Sally Patrick who runs the gallery immediately fell in love with his work and invited him to hold a one man exhibition.

Due to the success of his first show, Sally has invited him back for a second exhibition from May 14 to June 11.

For over thirty years Panchal has worked solely in watercolour and many of his paintings include graceful figures with large dark soulful eyes illustrating a personal vision suspended in time.

He said: “The earthen colours of my palette relate to my early years spent in a village in Gujarat, Western India.

“It is strange but through these experiences I found myself inspired to develop a very personal visual language.

“In my paintings of the family in which I grew up, where western notions of privacy were absent, the characters manage to create their own inner space and the lack of privacy often highlights their essential loneliness.”

Born in 1951 in Mesar in the state of Gujarat, Panchal studied art at the JJ School of Art in Mumbai where he also worked on a fellowship for a year.

His work has seen him be Artist-in-Residence at the National Gallery in London in 1994 and be included in the Tate Britain initiated touring exhibition in 2010-11.