Journey to the Centre of My Art

There’s something ironic about the word Heart. Take out the letters “H” and “E” and you’re left with Art. I know that’s not how etymology works, but I love the poetry of it because art to me, isn’t just something I do. It’s what’s left when you strip everything else away. It’s the part of me that keeps beating quietly and persistently.

I don’t paint. I don’t sing. I’m not a dancer or a musician but in every possible way, I believe I’m an artist. And my journey made me realise that it wasn’t a straight line. It was a slow unfolding process frame by frame something like watching a film develop in a darkroom.

I was thirteen when I held a camera for the first time. It was a second-hand Nikon D5300 that my uncle handed down to me, and I remember how it felt in my palm heavy and mechanical. At the time, I had no clue how to use it. Aperture, ISO and shutter speed they were just intimidating words but I was drawn to the idea that I could point something at the world and freeze it.

I joined a local photography workshop and tried to understand the language of light and focus, every family trip I had the camera slung around my neck and became the unofficial cameraman of every gathering. The photos weren’t groundbreaking, but they carried something personal. A kind of honesty and when people complimented my pictures even just casually it made me feel like I mattered. Like I was doing something real.

Back then, I wanted to be everything. A pilot, a chef, a tour agent. I was constantly drawn to professions that involved motion, discovery and stories but conventional academics like math, science, even commerce never really felt like home. I tried, genuinely but nothing clicked. Until one day, something did. I was on a trip to Karaikudi, a culturally rich town near Madurai. I remember lifting my camera to capture a artefact in an old heritage palace it felt like the echo of an old architecture whispering a story. That image when I looked at it later, was different. It wasn’t just a photo it was a feeling and it told a story. Something clicked inside me. That’s when I knew I didn’t just want to capture moments. I wanted to tell stories

this was the image

So I followed that feeling. I chose to study Visual Communication for my undergraduate degree. It felt risky at the time no one in my family had done anything remotely close to media but my parents supported me and I’m forever grateful for that. College was like stepping into a room filled with people who all spoke the same invisible language. We argued about films like they were personal philosophies. We spent nights editing rough cuts, debating camera angles, watching Steven Spielberg ,Martin Scorsese and Mani Ratnam like we were in church. I remember the way how we used to paused a scene just to talk about the lighting for five straight minutes and I knew I was in the right place

Film became my obsession. I learned to edit on Premiere Pro and later Da Vinci Resolve. I learned how to write screenplays, how to read them, how to understand silence, pacing and subtext. Every film I watched became a lesson how Denis villeneuve made grandness profound, how Ghibli made the mundane magical and how a cut could carry emotion across time. I began to understand that art wasn’t just about expression it was also about Craft,Skill,Discipline and the willingness to fail.

I completed a diploma in film, thinking I was ready to take on the world. But the truth is, the more I learned, the more I realized how much I didn’t know and that hunger to understand, to create, to push further led me here to Melbourne. From narrow streets of Tamilnadu to a sprawling city filled with strangers and stories I had yet to meet. I came here for my Master’s in Film, not just to refine my skills, but to live through different lenses. Different cultures and different rhythms of storytelling.

Every time I walk onto a set now, I feel that same quiet thrill I felt when I first held that old Nikon. I know a little more now on how to block a shot, how to guide a performance, how to build tension with a slow pan but the heart of it remains the same. I’m still that kid who watched Dumbo three times a day without fully knowing why it moved him. I’m still that teenager trying to tell a story with a camera that felt too big for his hands. I’m still the wanderer, still the dreamer. Only now, I know that art is not just my calling it’s my compass.

To me, filmmaking isn’t just about visuals. It’s about memory, and rhythm, and pause. It’s about the moments that sit in silence between lines of dialogue. It’s about the way a camera lingers on someone’s face after they’ve finished speaking. It’s about using light, shadow, and motion to say what words often can’t. It’s how I process the world. How I challenge it. How I love it.

It’s been 11 years since this journey started and it has been anything but easy but it’s mine. And it’s still unfolding.

Cut to black.

“You don’t make art, you find it.”

— Pablo Picasso