BY CLARA A RODRIGUES|NT NETWORK

‘Give me a museum and I'll fill it,’ said Pablo Picasso. In fact, this is a refrain from every artist as the choice of themes is unlimited.The Art and Culture department has organised a national level camp of senior artists where works produced will adorn the walls of the newly built museum at the old secretariat in Panaji.

The ongoing Indian Contemporary Painter’s Camp at the old GMC block is generating a lot of buzz among the artist community. The camp which strives to bring Indian artists of national and international repute under one roof is being seen as a positive means whereby local art students and artists will get an opportunity to interact and discuss.

The seven-day event (an annual activity initiated by the Art and Culture department of Goa) will continue till August 30 and. Says Mr Siddharth Gaitonde, an artiste himself and the coordinator of the camp, “This camp serves the purpose of promoting art in the state. The artists have been given the liberty to choose any theme as these are extremely senior artists.”

There are a total of 15 artists participating in this camp. They are Surendra Pal Joshi and Vidhyasagar Upadhyay from Jaipur, Deepak Shinde, Prafulla Dahanukar from Mumbai, Shuvaprasanna and Shipra Bhattacharya from Kolkatta, Jaikrishna Agarwal from Lucknow, Vinod Sharma from Mumbai, Rekha Rao from Bangalore, Laxma Goud from Hyderabad, Rm Palaniappan from Chennai, Neeraj Goswami from Delhi, Surya Prakash from Hyderabad, Paresh Maity and Jayasri Burman from Delhi.

A walk into the artists’ territory and you will see easels all around. Some paintings have been completed, some lying with just a stroke of the artists brush, while others still in the process of crystallising an artists thought process. RM Palaniappan from Chennai sits near his painting, contemplation written large over his face. He is doing his ground work which according to him is similar to what a sportsman would do prior to a match.

He says, “I am still conceptualising the thought in my mind. I usually paint with lines. This time I am using a lot of texture for the base work. It is an express movement which is abstract. Painting is a process and I cannot explain it as it undergoes change every single time, till it is completed.”

Rm Palaniappan who is also the regional secretary of the Lalit Kala Academy, has visited Goa several times, but this is his first visit for a mission such as this. He says, “I like Goa but I cannot say my painting has been directly inspired by it.”  

Jaikrishna Agarwal from Lucknow is yet another artist in the camp who like Rm Palaniappan will be painting an acrylic. He describes his painting, “Mine is a simplified version of landscapes. It is minimalist.”

He continues, “Art like nature is around us in abundance. We have a subconscious, and so you cannot pin point and say what the inspiration behind a particular painting is.”

Vidhyasagar Upadhyay from Jaipur is painting using an abstract approach. But his painting is inspired by the nature and beauty of Goa, which he has revelled in on numerous occasions. Prod him on for a reaction on Goa’s greenery being sold, he says, “It is a pity. This should not happen in a place like Goa.” Vidhyasagar Upadhyay however chooses not to reflect this aspect in his painting.