"I want people to find their own image ............and enjoy it."
- Laxman Pai (quoted in an article by Lisa Monteiro on 18th September, 2016).

Laxman Pai strove to live by the ideals of absolute and complete freedom. Though ostensibly an artist, his heart was that of a revolutionary. Born in Goa, he would go on to study at the Sir J.J. School of Art. His yearning for freedom led him to involve himself in various aspects of India's freedom struggles. He participated in the Goa liberation which was targeted at getting the Portuguese colonizers to leave India. He was also a part of the Satyagraha movement of non-violent protest to free the subcontinent from the yoke of the British. He would spend much time in Paris which informed his visual repertoire. His works are vibrant, bright, marrying the traditional with the modern, exemplifying his individualistic spirit. He studies the folk art of India within his work, bringing his own uniqueness to them, with his fondness for angles and flat expanses. The results are somehow spirited and bursting with a joie de vivre that is palpable.

"Illusion"
Here, one bears witness to his deep interest in the human condition, juxtaposed alongside the force of nature and a suggestion of the divine; the image created is delicately complex. In this oil on canvas dated 1980, he plays with light and shadow and with visual metaphors to create a world on the canvas that is shrouded in a kind of mystery for his audience to solve.