Art for life, not just a lavish piece on road

They say life is a work of art and if you don’t like it, paint on it. The mother-daughter duo of artistes from Ahmedabad-- Saumya Pandya Thakkar and Shakuntala Pandya – appear to have taken this quote as inspiration for what they believe to be life’s work.

The duo, who have painted their way into several record books, including India Book of Records for biggest 3D artwork and Limca Book Of Records for creating “Largest Aqua Shadow Artwork”, have left their indelible mark on life by creating a 3D zebra crossing on the highway that helps make it safer for pedestrians who always fear for their lives with modern vehicles zipping past, staring right into their faces.

“One day an authority from IL&FS company asked me to solve the issue of series of accidents at several black spots. We held marathon discussions and came up with an idea of painting 3D zebra crossing as has been done in some foreign countries. The challenge here was that while foreign countries have 3D zebra crossings in the cities, none of them is on the highways,” says Saumya Thakkar.

But what’s the big deal about painting a 3D zebra crossing on a highway. Globally several countries have experimented with this kind of optical illusion to help curb accidents on the roads. “We have witnessed such crossings in our daily lives but probably like most, have ignored these safety zones. Many do not even bother to slow down. But the authorities and those concerned for road safety are now trying to create optical illusions on the streets to momentarily fool drivers’ eyes into thinking that there is a road block ahead. This helps slow them down a bit and making the streets that much more safer,” says Saumya.

Detractors may find fault with such experimental 3D illusions on the road, stating that drivers could quickly get acclimatised and remember their locations but even if an eye is fooled for a moment, it could go a long way as they could still slow down to avoid a 3D object before the brain fully processes what they are seeing.

The Chinese have created similar optical illusions by way of 3D crosswalks and “floating” 3D crossings, which when seen from a distance, appear to be levitating above the road.

“Unlike foreign locales and artistes, we were aware of limitation of our skills and thus we just submitted some simplistic designs using the basic colours and colourful designs which could match the demands of authorities in India. They selected some of the designs and we applied the 3D artwork on highway for the very first time in India,” Saumya says.
They zeroed in on using basic colours like white, yellow, black, brown, blue which are commonly used on roads. The thought process behind this was not to make it too distracting to an eye at high speed. “Human eyesight can see only 2D effects and not strong 3D effects like camera vision. Thus, it does not create extreme strong illusion which could be seen only in photograph. The minor 3D effect could be seen from certain prospective from safe distance so that not just pedestrians but drivers too will be safe on roads,” Saumya said.

The results have been pretty optimistic as no accidents have been reported from the place where Saumya, her mother and their team of 8 people worked to pour their heart and soul in creating 3D zebra crossing. “IL&FS authorities are very happy to see the effects and have ordered us two more paintings,” she says.

It is not just IL&FS that has now extended similar orders, Saumya has also been approached by several other agencies to replicate her art on the roads. The experiment has also seen interest from the Central government, with Union minister for Road Transport and Highways Nitin Gadkari, even tweeting some time back, “We are trying out 3D paintings used as virtual speed breakers to avoid unnecessary requirements of speed breakers.”

The Centre has already made its intent clear that it would experiment with 3-D painting of speed bumps on national highways, rather than the wrong policy being adopted by many states in building speed breakers on the highways. In April this year, the ministry  issued directives for   state governments  to remove speed breakers on national highways as it could “be a source of serious hazards and accidents to the fast-moving vehicles”.

According to statistics, over 1.5 lakh Indians are killed every year in fatal road accidents and now the government wants to reduce these fatalities by half in the coming three years.

Saumya, who has no formal training in painting, has been painting since her childhood and had launched her studio Wet Brush $234P in 2002 and began painting professionally with the help of her mother Shakuntala Pandya. “I believe in experimenting with art. I feel the flawless powers of art and thus I tried everything from traditional painting to applying out-of-the-box techniques. As part of my experiments I created bubble painting, aqua shadow painting and 3D paintings. I am also planning to experiment with more new ideas. I would never like to limit my skills with fix specialisation. I would like to move on with innovative dreams. If such small tactics can solve major problems such ideas should be applied soon. We are extremely in high spirits that our skills can save many lives. It may not stop 100% accidents but can reduce the numbers easily,” she says.

She concludes by saying that she wishes that more ideas be tested and implemented to solve such major issues. Young ideas should be accepted when traditional methods are not working well. “Art has so much power than just a lavish show piece,” Saumya adds.