Chandramohan Kulkarni is a renowned illustrator with exquisite paper jackets and elegant line drawings to his credit. He does not work in a rut but always breaks into new ways and line rhythms. His illustrations to the Marathi translations by Mangesh Padgaonkar of Shakespeare's plays, Tempest, Julius Caesar and Romeo Juliet are highly stylized specimens of his originality and skill in illustrative art. He can well rest on his present laurels but he is blessed with a kind of divine discontent which is the hallmark of original talent that is ever seeking its own total identity.

Very few persons including his admirers know that he is attempting a series of oil paintings on original themes in his high pitched studio where he works like Vincent Van Gogh or as Gaunge did in a primeval den in Tahiti visualizing our ancient ancestor untouched by what we ignorantly call civilization and its hideous and biasphemous ways in modern times. With perseverance and a flair of imagination, Chandaramohan has worked upon a series of painting in a style which he evolves to suit the theme ne pursues. He does not work in any fixed and known style, traditional or modern or ultra modern, Indian, Western or European, realistic, naturalistic or abstract. They all come handy to serve the potential of his theme. He varies his mode and style of presentation to bring out the significance which he intends to invest in his paintings.

One of his series depicts the different stages of the development of a girl, from her childhood to adolescence. This series is akin to realistic presentation close to the Indian Style. He starts by showing the small girl with her doll by her side and then she prepares the doll as a bride, then she is sitting on a home swing and the doll is left aside looking back as if abandoned, but not quite. Then the girl keeps on growing up and now she has a wooden horse by her side on which her prince charming will arrive from a fairy land. The adolescent girl is both looking forward and at the same time gets lost in nostalgic memories. There are presented in the form of grey coloured thin streams dripping down from a grey fore-ground in irregular drooping lines. There is a well intended lack of refinement in the figure, dress and posture of the girl, suggesting simple, traditional rustic way of life and naively.

The second series on the life and plight of Brass Band players is more comprehensive. The Brass Band was a popular feature of British Rule and was the inevitable accompaniment of police parade and police functions. It had acquired a reputed status in public life and was the cynosure of admiring eyes of the school going boys and even the grown up citizens. The red, white uniform with black pea caps and golden epaulets and golden strings down the breast pockets, and knee high black shoes were highly impressive. Now the group of Band players has fallen from grace. They are now mostly engaged at marriage ceremonies or religious functions or village fares and such other public functions .They have become a fading race with lost a glory making a difficult and disgraced living, Chandramohan has involuntarily studied all these aspects of their present day existence and got emotionally involved in them. He has absorbed and presented all these in his own characteristic way. The red uniform is preserved, the cap and boots are there but the golden frills are disarmed and faded. Now the members of the group sit at a convenient place in their half damaged uniform waiting for a host to engage them for a function. Chandramohan tries to plumb to the depth of their present existence from a variety of angles, sometimes fixing his eye on their old footwear, or broken cups of tea and their desperate camaraderie. It is an intense search for truth of a group of professionals on the verge of extinction.

Chandramohan's more ambitions series is on the male and female principles in human existence in observed different postures and moods. The significance can be understood at different levels, philosophically, biologically, sexually according to the experience and vision of the viewer. It is a powerful and challenging series presented in a style that is vital and original. The male is like a bull, massive, aggressive and furiously red in his appearance symbolizing his strength and devastating intention. At times, after appeasement, he becomes mellow, humble and hungry for motherly affection. The female is small in stature and pure in her white appearance, desiring cohabitation and fulfillment. She understands and forgives the animal force of the bull. At the times she can even ride and subdue the bull. Indeed, this is an overwhelming series, bringing out the fire and fury and deeper understanding of a true born artist.