About our Artist of the Month, in her own words:

I first started painting in earnest only in early the sixties though I had been interested in painting even as a schoolgirl in the thirties. That interest had been confined only to dabbling in watercolours and admiring the work of artists. I did want to go to the School of Art in Madras soon after passing S.S.L.C examination from the Church of Scotland Mission School, Northwick Madras in 1937. Those were the days when subjects like art were not considered worth encouragement by parents. So I had to be content with a B.A. degree from the Christian college and a B.T. degree from St. Christoper's Training College, Madras. I taught English for 9 yrs. before getting married to Lt. Cdr P. A. Moses. He was at the time of our marriage a senior education officer stationed in I.N.S. Shivaji, Lonawala near Pune. For 11/2 yrs, I drank in the lovely scenery of hills, valleys and lakes around the establishment, on the way to the town and in neighbouring Khandala. Four years later, we were in Bombay and used to see exhibitions of paintings arranged in the Jehangir Art Gallery.

Then in early sixties my husband surprised me with a gift of painting materials, oil colour brushes and 4 books with paintings by European artists. He bought them in Singapore when I.N.S. Vikrant on a goodwill visit touched Singapore. I was thrilled and busied myself copying some from the books and painting a few scenes as viewed from my window on the 5th floor of Dhanraj Mahal, near the Gateway of India. I had a great deal of encouragement from my husband; my children were too young. For nearly 20 years after that, I did nothing.

At the turn of the millennium, when I was 80 yrs old, my elder daughter asked me to paint two subjects of scenery for the drawing room of their newly built flat in Jal Vayu Vihar in Powai, Bombay. Initially I was very hesitant. Then I read and article in "Chicken Soup for the Woman's soul" (Page 235) under "Grand Ma Moses and Me". Grandma Moses started painting when she was 80 and gave them away until she was spotted and she shot into fame. I got confidence in myself and bought colours again and gave her two paintings. My sagging morale got a boost when she said her colleagues from Jai Hind College admired them when they visited her.

I am in my 83rd year now and enjoying reasonably good health by the immense grace of God. I don't consider myself an artist, but a dear friend of mine is bent upon projecting me as one, so I bowed down to her wishes and gave four freshly painted ones and dug into heaps of old papers and retrieved a few old moth-eaten ones, and submitted them for what they are worth!

Chandramathy Moses