The artist known as Brahma has been producing his beautiful works for over 30 years. Lucy Furlong downed her glo-sticks and tiger balm to chat to the man who's delivered trippy visuals to several generations of party people.

If you’ve ever listened to Goan Trance, especially at a big party or in a nightclub, or if you are very lucky on a beach in India, you may have seen Brahma’s work, or at least something influenced by it. When I knew I was going to talk to him about his show of new paintings, on a smaller scale to those he normally produces, I took a trip down memory lane, to hazy nights of dancing with friends, surrounded by vivid, fluoro, glowing banners depicting complex patterns and spiritual images. These decorations are crucial to giving these events their multi-sensory vibe and are an essential part of any Psy-trance experience.

Brahma’s first show, serendipitously held at The Muse 269 Gallery in Portobello Road, is on his old stomping ground, Ladbroke Grove: “I like the Grove; it’s the best part of London. The Grove is good because there’s a nice mix.” Brahma lived in Ladbroke Grove in the '60s and early '70s, and although he left to live in Wales when he and his wife started their family, he still retains a close connection to it because his son lives there now.

The show is testimony to an art form that Brahma has made his own. Starting back in the early 1990s he began to create huge backdrops to decorate trance music parties held for blissed-out travellers in Goa, and a whole generation of party goers since worldwide: “My intention when I first started making images for parties and music events was that people would be reassured by the paintings, especially if they were in some kind of altered state because then they would feel “I’m at home, they’re not going to scare me””.

He has been travelling the world painting his visual accompaniments to dance parties held by legendary trance DJ, Tip Records label owner and member of Shpongle, Raja Ram for the last 20 years: “He was a friend of mine when I lived in the Grove. He then had a band called Quintessence and I did posters for him. Then I went to Wales and he started touring and went to India about 25 years ago, and got interested in the electronic sounds.” Raja Ram commissioned Brahma to do a painting for his 50th birthday party: “And it wasn’t fluorescent, so of course, I immediately realised that they had to be from then on, if you’re going to see them on the dance floor, with all the smoke and everything. The only thing you’d see in those days was people’s white shirts or their teeth. So after that that’s what I’ve done. All of these can be seen in UV light and they look quite different from what they do at the moment.”

Brahma’s painting has developed over many years: “I’ve been through different phases, I worked in the film industry for twenty years and there you had to paint anything, so I learned to copy anything.” Between leaving Ladbroke Grove and starting his work with Raja Ram, Brahma spent twenty years in the film business, starting out as a painter, becoming a scenic artist, art director and finally a production designer, along with his then business partner, as he explains: “It’s very unusual for that to happen. Most people who start as painters stay as painters because it’s quite a hierarchical business, the film industry, but we sort of broke all the barriers.”

He worked on The French Lieutenant’s Woman, Reds and one of his favourites, Testimony, with Ben Kingsley, amongst many others. The last film he worked on was Madonna’s Evita: “But then before all that when I was in the Grove, before I got any family, I was a sort of hippy I suppose, so I was doing what would be considered psychedelic paintings then.”

Brahma’s long-standing interest in different  cultures and religions, including Buddhism, Hinduism and Mayan culture, forms much of the subject matter of his paintings,  mixed with geometric patterns and molecular structures, flowers and trees. There is a playful air to some of the paintings, for example the Mayan prince with the face of a Buddha, which as he says are made primarily to please and entertain people. There is no doubt, however, that Brahma is a master craftsman as well as a fine painter.  The images are painted on to un-primed canvas using fluorescent silk dyes. He uses intricately cut paper stencils to apply the first layer of paint.

There is no room for mistakes using the silk dyes and so the process is meticulous throughout.
Display on the white walls of the gallery allows Brahma’s paintings to be shown as pieces of art in themselves, rather than essentially as part of a total experience: “Now it’s another phase where I’ve got the opportunity to show just my own work to a bigger audience, a wider audience, because the parties are a world in themselves.”

Some of the stencils are also framed and on show and these create a welcome counterpoint to the richness of the works, providing a change in texture, material and a refresher between the colourful paintings: “I just want people to enjoy them and see them in this context which for me is really fulfilling and something I’ve always dreamed of.”

The Art of Brahma is showing until 4th April 2011 at The Muse 269 Gallery