Luminous serenity

Born in Gujarat, western India, in 1951, Shanti Panchal studied art in Bombay before coming to London on a British Council scholarship in 1978. He has made his home in this country ever since, with regular trips back to India, and enjoys a justly high reputation for the distinctive large-scale watercolours he specialises in. However, he produces only a few paintings a year (a large picture may take six to 12 months to complete), and has no commercial dealer to represent his work, so it is hard to see it unless on view in a museum. Panchal has been fortunate in official honours — winning the BP Portrait Award at the National Portrait Gallery in 1991, being appointed artist-in-residence at the British Museum and the Harris Museum, Preston, in 1994, and benefiting from various commissions in painting and stained glass — and has enjoyed solo shows in recent years at the Museum of Modern Art in Oxford (1993), Angel Row Gallery in Nottingham (1998) and Pitshanger Manor, London (2000).