Bandenawaz Nadaf

Bandenawaz is one of the three artists who helped us design SPARSH. He was born without his left hand and with limited use of his right arm, and paints with his feet. He learned to write with his foot as a child and took private art lessons from local teacher Balachandra Dhanu. His art teacher there was the first person who saw what he could do. “Once she saw me foot painting in the classroom, she realised that I have it in me to paint with my feet,” he told us. He is an official scholarship holder with the VDMFK — the international Association of Mouth and Foot Painting Artists — recognised since 2015.

Bandenawaz has been a member of IMFPA since 2015. Before that, he was already exhibiting his work — his paintings were shown at the Jehangir Art Gallery in 2010 and 2013, one of India's most respected galleries. His style is mostly abstract, inspired by the great Indian artist MF Hussain. He also paints nature scenes and portraits. His paintings have hung on the walls of Bollywood stars.

Bandenawaz helped shape SPARSH in two important ways. First, he showed us the real effort it takes to repeat a shape — every petal in a symmetric flower means the same foot movement, again and again. That fed directly into AI-Assisted Mode, where SPARSH draws the structural outline so the artist can focus on colour and expression. He also told us about the helper he usually needs during the colour stage — to hand him the right paint, to change the water. That feedback, together with the same need from Nadeem and the PRC artists, shaped the automatic tool changer, which lets the artist switch colours with no helper at any stage.