The quiet and the breeze brought out their creative best. The 12 artists at the State-level Women’s art camp were immersed in their canvases for the last three days at the Jaydev Bhawan.
The Rashtriya Lalita Kala Akademi, New Delhi and Odisha Lalit Kala Akademi’s effort to create a bond with the artists bore fruit. Besides the 12 excellent works that were produced by these women artists in the camp on various themes, the event provided them a platform to interact and discuss women’s involvement in the art scenario today.
Eminent woman painter Satyabhama Majhi said more such camps should be organised regularly to bring to limelight more women painters of the State. “This camp was a good platform to identify the problems that women artists face. Today, the State has very few women artists as most of them give up art after marriage and sometimes under societal pressure,” she said. Majhi presented a work on the theme of urbanisation.
For Nandini, an art student from Jeypore, her stay in the tribal-dominated region shaped her artistic sensibility. Her huge green-dominant work had nostalgia peeping out from all over. The lovely earthy colours and textures of Nandini’s big canvas had a positive effect on the viewer. The bright yellows receding into the browns and the different levels on the canvas, the adept work done with acrylic, was an abstract. She painted a tribal settlement in the backdrop of sunset.
Cuttack-based Priyadarshini Mohanty worked on the theme of conservation of biodiversity. She painted a large tree with yellow and black spots dominating the bark of the tree portraying the relation between tigers and trees. “Through my painting, I wanted to create awareness among people about the depleting forest cover and its effect on the tiger population in the world,” she said.
Two other painters from Cuttack, Saista Naaz and Subhra Mohanty drew on the themes of education and culture respectively. While Saista in her canvas portrayed the importance of education on humanity, Subhra on the other hand showed modernisation slowly eating into the rich cultural heritage of the country.
Another interesting painting was that of Jacinta Murgesh of Dhauli Art College wherein she painted a slum boy chasing a dragonfly. “The slum boy is shown chasing a dragonfly to show the boy’s aspiration to dream high, to fly high,” she said.
Interestingly, all the women artists in the camp broke free of the shackles of so called feminine subjects and feelings to move on to very general and universal ones. The camp concluded on Thursday evening and all the paintings were put on display.