09 December,2010 06:48 AM IST | | Soma Das
Artist Nitin Deshmukh's wide canvas captures the cobbled, rustic lanes of Vidarbha's villages where time stands still untouched by chaotic, urban buzz
These days, Maharashtra's Vidarbha district is in the news for the wrong reasons, mostly. In Infamous for its farmer suicides, it's where 70% of the state's suicides occur. But keeping aside the poverty and crushing debt, one man feels that its rustic, small-town charm is also at stake.
Images from the The Travelling Soul exhibition
"Development is at its doorstep, it won't be long before developers acquire land and start building apartments over there. Then, its natural beauty will be lost forever. Villages are disappearing at a rapid pace and soon we may only see them as models in museums," believes Nitin Deshmukh, who is a part-time artist and a full-time interior decorator from Nagpur.
In his first exhibition in Mumbai, titled The Travelling Soul, he draws attention to the rich heritage and glorious past of Vidarbha through 50 water colour and crayon artworks.
"I grew up in a village but spent most of my adult life amidst the concrete jungle of cities like Mumbai (I studied in the JJ School of Arts). So, there is a certain nostalgia I feel for the simple life that villagers lead and I wanted people to experience that," he adds.
His colourful paintings depict the architecture of the traditional mud houses with thatched roofs, the dome of the village temple visible through the foliage, bullock carts lying on street corners and the wooden gates decorated with torans (garlands); each have been captured at different times of the day.
Unlike artists who plonk themselves at a spot and paint, Deshmukh has an interesting modus operandi: "I visited the villages over the last five years and clicked a lot of photographs. Later on, I reproduced them on canvas and on special coloured paper."
Since 2010 marks 50 years of the formation of the state of Maharashtra, it would be an seem apt time to go back in time and pay tribute to this rich region in our state.
ill December 13, 11 am to 7 pm
At Nehru Centre Art Gallery, Dr Annie Besant Road, Worli.
Call 9890712468
