Juvenile strokes

The colours of life appeal the most to you when the many worries that assail the adult mind are still alien; when the fresh palette of childhood mind receives the myriad hues of nature in all their brilliance. Such an unhindered celebration of nature is what you would see in the paintings exhibited by 14 young child artists at the Russian Cultural Centre. The wannabe-Van goghs, in the age group of 6 to 16 years, are students of Doodle Art Academy, near Museum. Some were testing the coloured waters for the first time ever this summer vacation and others have been training under A Shafeek and John Punnala for a while. The strokes honed by training display clarity and confidence as in the graceful ease of Abhirami Kollara, a plus one student. She has been attending the weekend classes for one-and-a-half years now and has already held a solo exhibition. The beauty of rustic settings dominate Abhirami’s canvas while Gautaman’s nature scenes acquire the fluidity of abstracts. His vaguely-contoured lone tree in a countryside, birds in their flight home at the fall of dusk, are all, a tone higher for the naïve medium of crayons that the twelve-year-old has used. Even when you admire the splurge of colours in Noel Shyju’s thickly-populated canvas, the strokes do not tell you that he is all of 6 years. His canvas happily finds room for merry kids playing in the rain, adults who are busy herding the cattle home and lush greenery, bending down as the rain  falls pitter-patter on them. The smiling sunflower that takes all of a canvas to beam at you won’t go unnoticed and tells of seven-year-old Hannah Angelin’s first-hand communion with nature. Jayakrishnan, a fifth standard student, has found his medium in water colour, while one of the seniors, Joji Philip, who has a solo exhibition to his credit, experiments with many a medium including water colour and oil painting. The lucid forms in the paintings of Balu B S stand out and one is touched by the gift that God has bestowed on the differently-abled teenager. The oldest artist in the group is 22-year-old Biju M, who joined the Academy only a few weeks ago. He has displayed captivating pencil drawings that would easily pass as those of a seasoned professional. The deftness, to which he lays absolutely no claim, comes from the painting job that has earned him a living, confesses a bashful Biju. The exhibition closes on July 26. Time – 10 am-6 pm.

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