It was a splash of colours and ideas at the Dhauli College of Art & Craft as the campus came alive with beautiful creations in water colour, sketch pens, acrylics and crayons.
The college this week hosted a three-day national child art exhibition and a spot painting competition which saw participation of children from all across the State.
Altogether, there were over 1000 entries in three groups. Group A had participants between the age group of four and seven years, Group B between eight and 12 years and Group C between 13 and 18 years. Around 650 paintings were selected for display and 200 odd artists were felicitated on the final day on Tuesday. For most of the children, this was their maiden stroke and tryst with art. The selection panel had eminent artists and faculty members from Dhauli College and Utkal University of Culture.
Not framed, the paintings attracted attention for not just creativity of the children but also the amount of detailing that went into the process. Unique and different from the other, each painting was a reflection of children’s perception towards everyday issues. While some tried hands at painting on ‘Terrorism’, some drew on the theme of ‘Corruption’, ‘Nature’, ‘Rape’, and even ‘Female Foeticide’.
Most of the participants in Group A drew cartoons, flora and fauna. The elder participants focused on serious themes.
Mahesh Mehera of Bhubaneswar drew a parallel between the lives of rich and the poor, portraying corruption as the dividing agent. Using sketch pens, Pratik Sahoo of Jharsuguda drew the depleting forest cover, frequent felling of trees and the intrusion of elephants into human habitation, a problem that not just Jharsuguda but many other districts of Odisha experience today. He also drew villagers hiding atop trees to escape the elephants.
Like Prateek, Rasmita Bhuyan of Cuttack painted the depleting forest cover and its impact on the environment, while, Swarna Manjari Mishra showed the recent Uttrakhand disaster in her works.
The art camp aimed at stimulating the imagination of children and targetted to know their interest and experiences that were vividly depicted through different media and forms. It intended to recognise the creativity of young minds and the works conveyed a great deal of information about the every day life experience and interest of the children, which play a pivotal role in their development.
On the occasion, some interesting pieces of work by senior artists and sculptors were exhibited at a special gallery in the art college.