He has been focusing on poverty, but Werner Dornik is not one of that tribe of Western artists who glorify poverty and make big money by selling heartbreaking pictures of poverty to the rich abroad. Dornik does sell these images, but he channels the money right back to the people he focuses on. Like through the recent auction of the paintings of the leprosy affected students of the Bindu School of Art, for instance. And the paintings are not grief-laden either.
Dornik’s Indian connection dates back to 1981, when, as a teenager he had motored into India from Europe across Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan. “I visited Varanasi then. I saw a poignant young child disfigured by leprosy and started clicking away. It was then that I was struck by the insensitiveness of what I was doing. The child needed medicines worth perhaps 10 American dollars. It was so little for me, but so much for her,” he reminisces. The paltry sum could make such a difference to her life, he reflected. A deeply moved Dornik then cancelled his plans of seeing the rest of India, distributed the money he had in hand to the girl’s parents and other poor locals and headed back home, Bad Ischl in Austria.
Colour in their lives
However, Dornik’s most inspiring endeavour has to be the Bindu Art School that he has established near Chennai for the leprosy- affected, in association with his old friend and fellow campaigner, Padma Venkataraman, linked with organisations like Global Cancer Concern and WIA, and daughter of former president R Venkataraman.
Dornik and Venkatraman had invited 21 persons from Bharatpuram colony near Chengalpattu district in Tamil Nadu and initiated the Bindu Art School. At Bharatpuram colony, persons affected by leprosy live in exile together, supporting each other. “The idea was to teach them to assimilate their experiences in an artistic way - through painting. I was sure that if leprosy - affected people painted their inner and outer experiences of life, art work of enormous artistic and material value can be uncovered,” says Werner Dornik. Dornik has been working with leprosy - affected persons worldwide. Dornik even pays a stipend to these artists. It has been a whole new world ever since, for people like 78-year old Srinivasan. Srinivasan has seen a lifetime of discrimination and passive apathy that Indian society is capable of inflicting upon those who have had the misfortune to contract leprosy. Life had been devoid of color until Werner Dornik and Padma Venkatraman crossed their way and brought art into their lives.
“The big surprise,” Padma Venkataraman points out, “is the fact that these paintings are full of cheer and joy, of life and warmth.” There is no trace of anger, pain and frustration that a socially crippling disease like leprosy can set off in a country like India. You find in their works vibrant flowers and happy people, bright landscapes and charming still life studies, all in a cheerful hue of colours. As for technique, it is so straightforward that these paintings verge on being simplistic, and are perhaps especially appealing because of this. The lines are plain; the perspective verges towards flatness. It is the elegantly simple composition, freshness of the images, and cheerful colour palette that wins you over. You feel transported to a world where life is simple, and surprisingly pleasant.
The first thing that Dornik told them was, “You have been used to stretching your hands for getting alms. Now you should stretch your hands to show the beauty inside you.” Not surprisingly, the artists at Bindu look up to Dornik as a messiah. 78-year-old A R Srinivasan goes on to say, “I regard Werner Dornik as the ‘second’ Gandhi who has made people like me find respect in society.”
Srinivasan and the others who now paint happily at Bindu wait for his visits to the school. “They ask me a lot of questions on technique,” Dornik says. “My only instruction to the art ‘teachers’ who help them out round the year is ‘Don't correct them. Let them paint the way they like. Never mind if it seems un-proportional or misplaced’,” he says and adds, “When you interfere in an artistic creation, you kill the spontaneous beauty within it.” Dornik’s personal artwork has been impressive as well. He has been making statements on various issues that lie enmeshed in poverty. For instance, one of his works happens to be a collage of a five-dollar note and the photograph of a starving, rail-thin Asian girl child.
As for Bindu’s art, it is a virtual throwback to the socially conscious artistic lineage of artists like Pablo Picasso, who had voiced that art should be handled like a sharp knife or a weapon to prevent abuses, injustices, violation of human rights or wars. These paintings may not be technically correct masterpieces, but they have a special kind of energy. These paintings, and the stories behind them, appeal to the spirit.
