Apart from working hard in the healthcare sector through Apollo and spending time with hubby Ram Charan Tej, Upasana Kamineni has another area of interest — art. Upasana, vice-president of Apollo Charity, has been spotted at a number of art exhibitions in the city. Her interest in art, however, is not recent. “I have been into art since my school days,” recalled Upasana, a student of the Hyderabad Public School, who was at the Nehru Art Gallery to inaugurate a painting exhibition on Friday.
Soon after cutting the ribbon, the art enthusiast spent a good amount of time looking through each of the paintings on display and interacting with the artists. By her own admission, she sketches whenever she is stressed. “It’s a really good stress-buster!” she quipped. On this visit, she wasn’t under stress and if anything, was visibly chilled out. She was happy that curators across the city are encouraging budding artists by organising art exhibitions but she believes artists should be encouraged even more. “Nowadays, there are a lot of exhibitions in the city, which is a good thing. Artists should be encouraged to come up and share their work. I try to visit as many art exhibitions as I can since I love art,” shared Upasana.
The exhibition, titled Springs 2013, is a collection of paintings by nine final year students of MFA from the College of Fine Arts, Jawaharlal Nehru Architecture and Fine Arts University. Each artist has put up paintings on a different topic --- right from nature and village life to today’s women. Explained Annapurna M, one of the artists from the group show, “The theme of my paintings is nature and its relationship with men and women. And, in one of my paintings, there is also some text that I have written. I wanted to express my thoughts through a poem. So, I found a few poems that reflected my thoughts and I wrote them on my painting.” Apart from paintings reflecting nature, there is a painting of white tiger with a crown, titled ‘King’, which has been painted beautifully by Damodhar N. It attracted the admiration of Upasana. Another work of art that stood out at the exhibition is the one by Ramakrishna V. It is a visual spectacle, wherein he has tried to paint a village life --- with people, nature, roads, et al. It not only had an overall appeal to it, but its detailing was also very fine. Apart from the aforementioned, the simple one-rupee coin painting by Udaya Bhaskar Rao P was something unusual and very well done and had the distinguished visitor in thrall.
Springs 2013 is on till March 19 at the Nehru Art Galler, Masab Tank.
Timings: 11 am to 7 pm, and is also open on Sundays.