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Biggest painting workshop gets huge response

BUBANESWAR: Dhauli Peace Park on the outskirt of capital city that is famous for its tranquillity suddenly burst into life on Saturday. People of all ages having canvas and brushes in their hands were slowly trooping into the park.

The “unusual” assemblage of large number of painters was planned to hold the world’s biggest painting workshop, Enlightenment-2008.

Spirit of India, a Mumbai-based organisation, was initially targeting to churn out paintings by ensuring participation of more than 1,000 artists from different corners of the country.

About 157 painters had already registered within two hours of the workshop that got underway in the Dhauli Peace Park, sprawled over 15 acres of land. It was altogether a different world with artists wielding their brushes in the lap of nature.

The fund to be raised through auction of paintings would be spent for development of an old age village founded near Devanahalli, which is close to Bengaluru International Airport.

Asutosh Panigrahi, a Guinness book record holder for creating world’s largest mural painting and the main architect of the workshop, said, “it is an educative programme. Rarely senior artists create their paintings in association with the juniors. We have conceptualized the workshop in such a way that juniors will have enough opportunities to learn here.”

“Moreover, the objective of the international painting workshop is to preach the message of peace and harmony worldwide. We feel that this message is the need of the hour as communal forces are out to tarnish the image of the State,” Asutosh, who himself hailed from Orissa, said.

A lot of planning had gone into preparation of the mega painting workshop. “We have taken about 18 months to plan the spectacular assemblage,” he said

Asutosh is also an inspirational figure for fellow artists. Out of his 10 fingers, six were not in normal shape. Despite being a 60 per cent handicapped to paint, he had created world’s largest mural landscape painting over 9,731 sq ft of space in the year 2005.

Sunyata, a painter from Australia, said he was ready to put his painting for public auction as the fund would be used for a noble cause.

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