MADHYA PRADESH Khalil Gibran once said, “Let me, O let me bathe my soul in colours; let me swallow the sunset and drink the rainbow.” These words aptly describe Dr Archana Sharma, a zoologist who is 50 years old and a cancer survivor. Dr Sharma left her sad memories behind and dove headfirst into the world of colours. Sharma, who is now a painter, is a member of 150 to 200 art communities worldwide.
The Jabalpur-based zoologist began exploring the vast canvas of the outside world in the first quarter of 2020, when India joined other COVID-19-affected nations in locking itself off to contain the spread of the deadly pandemic. She did this by combining paintbrushes, coloured pencils, and a riot of limitless colours to create vibrant works of art.
The associate professor at Sri Guru Teg Bahadur Khalsa College in Jabalpur had never even imagined being a painter who would create evocative sketches and paintings that were inspired by folk and tribal art like Madhubani, Warli, and Pichwai kinds of paintings.
“I was not the only one locked inside my house because of the lockdown. My teenage son Arya and I were left at home while my Assistant Director (WCD Department) husband Manish Sharma went outside as a COVID warrior. Viewing horrifying images of mounds of dead bodies and sick patients awaiting their death throughout the world’s most affluent countries left me extremely restless, forcing me to look for creative solace somewhere else,” Dr Sharma said.
“The smiling portrait of my retired police officer father-inlaw Vijay Shankar Sharma, who had died of liver cancer, guided me in coming out of the sadness,” she maintained. The praise she received from her family and friends for drawing her father-in-portrait law’s flawlessly inspired her to start sketching more, starting with her own portrait and moving on to drawings of notable people, such as her all-time idol Swami Vivekananda, Sardar Patel, and Rabindranath Tagore.
The zoologist and bio-technologist started turning into a painter, guided by YouTube and other websites.
Sharma, who began her love of sketches and paintings with pencils in April 2020, now spends hours each day creating paintings with a variety of paintbrushes in the limitless sea of acrylic and watercolours. These paintings have been displayed in more than 150 online art communities run by artists and art enthusiasts spread across 50 different countries including Indonesia, Malaysia, Turkey, Brazil, Denmark, the United States and Ukraine.
The 150-odd paintings and sketches fashioned by Dr Sharma have not only just become part of the collections of these art groups, but also won laurels at online painting contests and exhibitions across the globe.
Recounting her battle with cancer, she said, “After the 15-hours marathon commando surgery, which spanned from lip to the throat, got me on ventilator support for four days at Mumbai’s Jaslok Hospital and bouts of radiation therapy in 2015. I controlled oral cancer through naturopathy, particularly yoga and meditation. But now sketches and paintings have given a new meaning to my life and have become my real yoga and meditation. I can skip food and sleep, but cannot live without colours, pencils and paintbrushes,” said Dr Sharma.