You are sixteen going on seventeen Baby, it’s time to think Better beware, be canny and careful Baby, you’re on the brink....
The aforesaid lines from an everlasting children’s movie The Sound of Music may suit her to the T, given her tender age. But budding young painter Anushka Ghosh is no timid kid. She is rather worldly-wise and understands issues which seem to lie way beyond her ken.
Her canvas corner is crammed with themes, relevant to contemporary society like women trapped inside a cage of oppressive patriarchy or women striving hard to liberate their souls from the shackles of imposed rules and regulations. An image of a woman painted in the mould of a benign Mother Teresa — the Saint of the Gutters — as the saviour of sufferers confirm Anushka’s psyche of a protester against vices of injustice, male-domination and gender-bias inflicted upon the fairer sex.
“A woman may entice the entire world as a temptress and cast a hypnotic spell over it with her attractive feminine charms. At the same time, she can take the world by storm, and can react to the injustice meted out to her. She can fight for her own cause and battle against all odds. One may wonder about her lack of muscle power, but my dear friend she can make all the difference with her resolute resilience and an uncompromising moral might. For there goes the saying that often wars are not fought with swords but with words,” says the perky lass, who likes to blend her arduous passion with a Cathartic pleasure.
“Any art form becomes laborious when it is crafted or created via a winding process. However, the stress that is released after its completion is nothing short of bliss. I get
my greatest adrenaline rush just by looking at the piece of art in its post-production stage, more so if the result is accomplished in the manner it was desired,” says the Class 11 student of Kolkata’s Oaktree International School.
Anushka’s debut display of paintings, titled Solo Canvas’ 12, was recently put up at the culture-capital’s prestigious art gallery of Birla Academy. The show has already garnered some rave responses and critical appreciation from all over. Well-received by avid connoisseurs, the panoply of paintings also notched up a decent sales figure. “Yes, it was an exhibition-cum-sale, and I’m so happy that five pieces out of a total 46 were already sold out right at the outset,” says the 16-year-old.
Apart from nature, which is one of her chosen subjects, Anushka also pays tribute to her hometown through her works off and on. “The city’s skyline and its panoramic vista keeps haunting my mind quite frequently,” she explains. Seems the fancies of a young heart just trickle into the canvas with effortless poise.
Born and brought up in Kolkata, Anushka reveals to have held a paintbrush and a palette for the first time in her life when she was barely four years old. Thereafter, she underwent a formal training in plain water hues for 11 years at the Academy of Fine Arts. However, her focus gradually shifted towards oil and acrylic paints.
In the above-mentioned exhibition, the artist has particularly dabbled in both acrylic and oil shades on the canvas. “Acrylic colours are bright and dry very fast, while oil chromes are time-consuming. It takes hours to get that shiny, lustrous effect from a greasy oil palette,” she explains.
Coming in various sizes, the paintings ranged from 15X12” to 35X25” in dimension. The price-band on the other hand was pegged around between `4,000 and `20,000. Next on the anvil is a solo show to be launched at Academy of Fine Arts, this October.
“Over there, the medium will be water-tints on paper and canvas,” Anushka chips in. Incidentally, the girl loves to opt for a vivid and radiant colour bar, as she likes to dwell on the beaming side of life. May be the dark, burnishing effect outlines her output in a more prominent and bolder fashion.
Teaching art to a host of aspiring school students or a bunch of underprivileged kids may claim her free-time as a mere hobby of a good Samaritan, but Anushka insists of opening up a precinct sometime in the near future.
With a yen for powerful imagery and realistic art, Anushka is ambitious about exporting her works abroad. Talks are on to dream big and set sail to Paris through the French cultural organisation in India — Alliance Française.
“My school also has links with several cultural institutions in Paris. All my teachers and peers goad me to push the envelope further, and buoyed by their encouragement, I’ve traipsed thus far,” she says.
Anushka is able to paint and portray the cloudy-grey chaos, sombre desolation as well as the sunny love and warmth with equal élan on her canvas. We wish Anushka all the best
in life and her future pursuits.