Other States - Orissa   

Lively shades of womanhood

BHUBANESWAR: Where there is a will, there is way, goes a saying. This woman seems to have this in ample measure.

On Thursday evening, as an exhibition of paintings by Shibani Nayak Swain opened at the Orissa Modern Art Gallery here, the visitors, who were mostly professional artists of the city, wondered whether anyone can become an artist merely by trying for just one year!

The degree of perfection shown in the 15 paintings in acrylic on canvas that adored the gallery walls belied the fact that the artist did not have any professional grooming.

A young housewife, Ms. Shibani never went to any art school. But all along, she had a secret wish to be a painter. “I studied life science and had my master’s in public administration. I knew nobody would allow me to go for a course in painting,” revealed the self-taught artist who kept her passion for painting alive by sketching at random in her school and college notebooks. Ms. Shibani got into a job and then lost touch with her childhood hobby.

“It was during the break from my job last year that I felt an irresistible urge to paint. I approached several artists. But they felt that it was too late. However, I was fortunate to have painter Manas Jena as my teacher,” acknowledged the solo artist at her debut show. Ms. Shibani’s canvas celebrates the varied hues of womanhood – be it elegantly dressed village women collecting water from a well, a mother carrying her cute baby girl, the lovelorn Meera singing for her Lord Krishna or women hiding her pensive face. “I am not a feminist. I just love painting this way,” she confesses.

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