When a 50-year-old resident of Chennai Yusuf Madhiya went to the wildlife sanctuary as a child, he would return home and immediately start sketching tigers and elephants. Everyone around him thought he would eventually grow into a wildlife artist, but life nudged him towards entrepreneurship instead.

Mr. Madhiya now spends most of his day managing his business, mostly surrounded by fabric and home furnishing materials for decades. But the artistic side of him never really went away. He says it literally did not let him sleep. Over the years with assiduous practice, he has created nearly 2,500 paintings documenting the heritage of South India, which have now become books. His painting was exhibited with The Madras Art Weekend at Lalit Kala Akademi, Dakshina Chitra and many galleries of Chennai.

“After all the work at my store which has everything to do with fabric, I wanted to return to my creativity,” says Mr. Madhiya. “And from wildlife drawings, I slowly started looking at the heritage of South India when I picked the brush with my friend and artist’s influence Balanchander,” he says. There was another reason he found himself painting through the night. When his father fell ill years ago, Mr. Madhiya had to stay awake to check on him and that interstitial stretch of time also became painting hours.

As a self-taught artist, he says there were days when he made so many drafts that he eventually discarded and stopped counting them altogether. “Being part of the Urban Sketchers Chennai chapter was how I started practising the landmarks of the city with live sketches, including Chennai Central, Anderson Church, Fort Geldria, Freemason’s hall and so on,” says he, adding how the architecture of Chennai’s landmarks includes a lot of straight lines and perspectives.

One lesson from his early years as an engineer, he adds, was learning how to adapt and keep attempting new things. That was when Mr. Madhiya felt painting Chennai’s heritage alone did not feel enough, he wanted to contribute to something more accessible. This led him to write Discovering Chennai’s Heritage and later went on to illustrate UNESCO World Heritage Sites in India in two volumes and is currently drawing the historical architectural monuments of South India called Stone Stories: Heritage of South India. “With my full-time furnishing business taking up most of my day, I could only paint either very early in the morning or late at night,” says the artist-entrepreneur. “Earlier, if I started a painting at night, I would not sleep until it was finished but now, I try not to rush through it,” he adds, who only uses tempera colours and linen art board.

Among all the works he has painted, the big temple of Thanjavur - the Brihadeeswara temple is one of his favourites. “As an artist, you imagine one thing and the final result becomes something else entirely, but this was the painting which came alive the way I envisioned it,” adds he.

When asked if he prefers keeping his profession and passion separate, Mr. Madhiya says in fact, it was art that expanded his business world. “At many of my exhibitions, people would ask what I do full-time, and funnily enough, I ended up getting furnishing clients through my art shows itself.”