JOIN USColor My World’, an art fundraiser initiated by ‘Aim for Seva’, which educates and empowers rural and tribal children, was recently held at Mahua Gallery, ITC Windsor.
An exhibition, put together as part of this initiative, showcases works of artists like Seema Kohli, Anjolie Ela Menon, Anindya Roy, Yusuf Arakkal, Jaya Javeri, C F John, Bharti Parajapati, Charan Sharma, Somenath Maity and many others.
There are also a few sculptures in bronze and copper like Dimpy Menon’s ‘Reaching for the Stars’ and Subrata Biswas’ ‘Playmate’.What is interesting is the variety of mediums used for the art — oil on canvas, egg tempera on paper, mixed media on digital canvas, etching and even water colour.
A lot of themes are also played around with —nature, Buddha, tribal motifs, animals etc, in interesting hues. At the fundraiser, there was a tete-a-tete with S G
Vasudev, whose painting titled ‘Rhapsody’ and a copper relief titled ‘Tree of Life’ are on sale at the exhibition. A huge part of the proceeds will go towards the cause.
After being fondly introduced by Arundhati Nag, a popular theatre personality in the City, he spoke about the imagery in his copper relief, how the kalpavriksha is the centre stage of life and how he uses traditional techniques to make contemporary
work.
“Art and life are no different to me and since that’s what I enjoy the most, that’s what I have to offer. Artists have been contributing to all causes possible for many years now. I for one feel the need to offer my works to whatever people in society are doing to make a change, though I don’t base my work on the cause itself,” shares Vasudev.
But the highlight of the evening was the canvas for ‘Strokes from the Heart’.
The concept was simple — the audience was given a chance to contribute to art and the cause by painting as many strokes as they wanted on the empty canvas.
Each stroke meant contributing a minimum of Rs 1000 towards the cause and for each contributor, a chit with their name was dropped into a bowl for the lucky draw.
After everyone put their strokes, artist Milind Nayak made some sense of the random strokes by creating a full painting out of it and signed it.
At the end of the night, a name was picked from the bowl by ITC Windsor general manager Virender Razdan and the lucky winner got to take home the newly-created piece of art.
As someone rightly said, ‘art is a journey of discovery’. And it certainly applied to the artists and art lovers who attended the event for the spirit of the cause.
The exhibition will be on till March 12 at ITC Windsor from 11 am to 7 pm.