TAKING ART TO PLACES

Utkarsh Veer, the chief strategist and angel investor in Mazda Art, is the new star on the art horizon. Mazda Art, founded by husband-wife duo Vispi and Dilnawaz Tarapore is a Hyderabad based company. With his astute mind and artistic instinct, Utkarsh has played a crucial role in Mazda Art's success. He is an innovator, advisor and mentor with expertise in the art and animation space. He is the founder and managing director of Rocksalt Interactive Games, one of the leading studios for game art. Team ART SOUL LIFE delves into a comprehensive discussion with Utkarsh Veer for a peek into his art journey.

Q1. How and when did you become interested in art?

There is hardly any scope of a ‘how’ or ‘when’. It came naturally to me. I am an artist myself, so art has been with me since the very beginning. In fact, I quit my graduation in science in the second year and joined Lucknow College of Arts. I did my BFA from Lucknow University in commercial arts.

Q2. Mr Veer, you yourself are a BFA from University of Lucknow; what are your views on the current BFA programmes in India? How relevant and up to speed are they in this new age of AI? Could a fine arts greenhorn be able to survive just as-is, if not, what should their adaptation strategy be?

The programmes offer multiple ways to gain understanding of the art industry. But art is such that only real experiences can create an artistic mindset. Institutes need to push and motivate their students to explore the real art world and not just suffocate them with courses after a point. To answer the second part, no matter what, the value of fine arts will not go down. AI can, maybe, make a particular kind of task fast, but not anything individualistic. And art is all about imagination and creativity which is all very personalised.