The idea for this "commemorative group portrait" came when I revisited India in 2007 after a long gap .  I'd flown to Delhi to see the retrospective of Binode Bihari Mukherjee  (superbly curated by Gulammohammed Sheikh at the National Gallery of Modern Art) and while there, met up with many of the artists I'd  first come to know in the 1980's,  all of us linked by our friendship with, and admiration for, the painter Bhupen Khakhar. In those years many of our enthusiasms and aspirations had converged; twenty five years later, with Bhupen having died in 2003 , our shared grief linked us again , and I felt a renewed surge of comradely affection. 

A few months later, I unexpectedly won the  2007 Travel Award from London's National Portrait Gallery, and journeyed that winter to draw each of them one by one. Sixteen drawings and preparatory works were shown at the National Portrait Gallery, London in 2008  but  the picture  went on until 2009. Bhupen is in the sky; below, from left, are myself, GM SHEIKH, VIVAN SUNDERAM , GEETA KAPUR , MRNALINI MUKHERJEE, SUDHIR PATWARDHAN, AMIT AMBALAL, NILIMA SHEIKH, with ATUL DODIYA coming in from the right margin. The imaginary setting has us all standing on Chowpatty Beach below Malabar Hill , not far from the central Bombay/Mumbai where Bhupen grew up. 

Timothy Hyman, December 2014