A dynamic painter, meritorious student, perfect teacher and a good artist all rolled into one. Meet the 17-year-old painting sensation, Lalitha Bandaru.
Unlike boys and girls of her age, who are either into studies or crazy about music and films, this first-year student of Fine Arts prefers to give expression to her imagination on the canvas. “I imagine and capture the details in paint. It takes me three to four days to do a painting. However, the time also depends on the size of the canvas,” explains Lalitha.
A meritorious student of the Hyderabad Public School and the Villa Marie College, Lalitha stood first in the Fine Arts and Design Entrance Test-2010 of the Jawaharlal Nehru Architecture and Fine Arts University. She is also the recipient of the Dean’s Scholarship from the San Francisco Art Institute, worth Rs 25 lakh ($8500 per year), for further studies in painting.
If painting is her first love, mathematics is her second love. Her father B Nandan, an educational trainer encouraged her to take up the abacus and mental arithmetic. She has also won many awards at the state and national level in abacus competitions and also teaches abacus to children.
“It’s a matter of pride for a guru to have such a gifted and extremely committed pupil. And its the same feeling when a students finds a extremely good teacher,” says Prof Stanley Suresh, professor of painting, JNTU-CFA, who has been Lalitha’s guide, since she was seven years old.
The prolific artist has about 60 oil and acrylic paintings and innumerable in water colour to her credit already. Her paintings are a mixture of landscapes, still life and abstract art.
“Since the age of five, she used to draw and paint very joyfully,” says B Rajeshwari, the proud mother of Lalitha, who is the principal of the Sri Sai Siddhartha School. Noticing her natural ability in drawing and colouring, Rajeshwari encouraged Lalitha’s interest in painting. She even left the walls of the entrance hall of her house unfurnished to stall huge paintings of her daughter.
Lalitha is all set to launch her maiden painting exhibition called, ‘Top Ten Flirting with Nature’, on October 10 at 6.30 p.m at the State Art Gallery, Madhapur.
Lalitha Bandaru can be reached through her mother’s mobile: 9866472064 or email at contactlalitha.b@gmail.com.
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