The Hindu : Karnataka / Bangalore News : Painting the children of lesser God

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Monday, Nov 12, 2007
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Karnataka

Karnataka - Bangalore

Painting the children of lesser God

Staff Reporter

— Photo: K. MURALI KUMAR

Poignant images: C.D. Jain at the solo exhibition of his paintings at the Chitrakala Parishat on Sunday.

BANGALORE: Jain’s images are light and almost ethereal, but deal with themes that dabble with issues that are neither of the two.

Through charcoal drawings and water colours he creates a window into the soul of a child that is broken, bent and battered by poverty and circumstance.

He paints the “children of a lesser God” as he calls them to provoke the audience to think and reminds one of that scratch in the eye, that one dare not touch…that which bothers occasionally at stop-lights and railway stations. His images attempt to recreate that sense of pain and isolation in the children he meets as he travels extensively across South India.

C.D. Jain is an artist who has devoted his entire life to portraying the hues of childhood —from innocence to the darkness of abuse — is holding an exhibition of his paintings at the Chitrakala Parishat from November 9-15.

Jain started off with the dream of making a movie, when he embarked on a tour of Tamil Nadu in 1997.

He describes with great detail, his encounter with a child prostitute whom he met in Madurai, which changed the course of his life. He has conducted several workshops for destitute children around the country and worked with NGOs in Tsunami afflicted areas in Tamil Nadu. “Art is therapeutic for these children,” he says.His images are stoic, but do not attempt to sensationalise poverty, instead try to portray the impact of poverty and the wretchedness of their existence through symbolic postures and dull colours, that convey much more than stark photographic images of beggars and destitutes.

Two sides of the exhibition hall provide contrasting pictures of a single theme. While one wall exhibits pictures that show the soul of a child bent and broken by circumstance, the other showcases the imagination of the artist through the eyes of a child. “The reminiscence of my childhood” shows happy images of his childhood drawn in the frame of a wooden box from his childhood.

Cheerful and bright pictures of dolls, trees and elephants from his village in Kerala, and images of “mother and child” that convey a sense of belonging and affection, help drive home the cruel reality of poverty and the loss of childhood.

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