Paintings displayed at Art life Gallery convey messages on women and child exploitation. By Ananaya Banerjee
From fiery red to burnt orange and ochre shades, there’s a range of colours welcoming you at the Art life Gallery. The theme for the ongoing exhibition is shades of summer and the collection of paintings hint at the variation of colours that the earth dons during summer. At a glance, the exhibition looks like a kaleidoscope of unique expressions of artists who have come together to give a physical form to their creative instincts.
A veteran in his field, Sher Singh Kukkal has dabbled in every form of painting. He graduated from a renowned institute in lucknow in the 60s and received formal training in photography later. His recent works have been diverse as he likes to keep switching to a different medium. His works being featured in the exhibition showcase nature in its full glory.
Chitra Singh, who is an associate professor and a doting mother of two, took up painting as a hobby once her children grew up. Her work has clear feminist leaning as she tries to capture the state of women in our current culture. She usually displays her paintings with a poetic subtext. “I always leave my paintings a little raw so that they look natural and edgy,” she comments on her displayed work which shows women waiting in the dark for the sunrise to bring some hope to their lives.
Another female painter and a feminist, Timsy Banati, is an autodidact when it comes to art. With no formal training in art, Timsy took up the study of various disciplines on her own. Her work heavily draws from the horrific tales of rape and torment that women in Delhi face. Featuring dark shades of red and women in miserable conditions, her paintings show pain through the eyes of a victim. Her images are strong so that they do not get washed out from the public memory.
Anirban Khamaru is a trained artist from Kolkata and has an experience of over a decade in this field. His paintings are mostly abstracts but find a form if you delve into the thought behind them. He’s an environmentalist and deeply cares about the harm we are inflicting on nature. His paintings depict the loss of green cover, growing industrialisation and city’s conversion into a concrete jungle. Whenever he finds time, he teaches underprivileged children. One of his paintings depicts a small boy in rags. Half of his face is dark and the other has intrepid blotches of ink, as if in a bid to fight against his circumstances.
A disciple of Kukkal, Acharya Biswajit is an accomplished sitar player, yoga teacher and a versatile artist, Biswajit’s paintings are full of bold strokes and clashing colours that bring to life his imagination. He says that to show force in one’s painting one needs to be fast and aware of motion around oneself, creating a spiritual connection between art and the artist. His paintings give a sense of latent motion where one feels a great potential for movement without actually moving.
“We have used art as a medium to convey something important to people. Usually art galleries don’t see a regular footfall but with such work we really expect people to take a keen interest in art,” says the curator and co-owner of Art life Gallery, Priti Bajaj.