Galleri Kaya hosts hands-on painting session for JAAGO students

Galleri Kaya in Uttara hosted a hands-on painting workshop for 15 JAAGO Foundation students on 9 July, held as part of an ongoing exhibition at the gallery. The selected students, from classes 7 to 10, came from JAAGO School's Korail branch. JAAGO, a renowned NGO, runs free schools for underprivileged children across the country.

Goutam Chakraborty, director of Galleri Kaya, expressed hope and excitement for this workshop.

Tap Here to Add The Daily Star As A Trusted Source

“We are doing this for the first time and hope to conduct more such sessions,” he said optimistically.

Chandra Bhattacharjee, a Kolkata-based artist, described the exhibition as a protest, one aimed at class divides, at exploitation, and at how easily both nature and the underprivileged get overlooked.

Image

Photo: Courtesy

"Painting is more observing than painting. I want to inhale the scenery before I paint," he said. It is a nice line, but watching him move around the room, correcting almost nothing, it did seem to be how he actually works.

AtinBasak, also a Kolkata-based artist with 66 exhibitions to his name, ran the session himself, barefoot, in an orange shirt, mostly quiet.

The children were given envelopes and asked to touch the object in the envelope with their hands only while their eyes were closed. Basak wanted to stimulate and integrate their sensory organs and open new creative possibilities.

Basak meditates daily to calm his senses and treats the ritual before painting the same way. What he wanted from the students was not a good leaf drawing. He wanted them to stop thinking the way they had been taught.

“I want the children to learn how to think, get out of the rudimentary, and find their own creative voice,” Basak said while expressing hope and ambition that such events could serve as a stepping stone to becoming the next great painter or to another profession.

Despite initial difficulties, which were the entire point of Basak's concept, the students quickly found their footing and let their creative horses loose. 

The leaves, once the envelopes were opened and the rustling died down, were what they had been asked to paint. Some students got the veins right before touching a brush to colour them in; others rushed the whole thing and had to start over on a fresh sheet.

Basak walked between them without much comment, stopping now and then to crouch beside a page, look at it for a moment, and move on without saying whether it was right.

Munir Ali, JAAGO School's administrator, proudly announced that the selected students are the best artists at the JAAGO School's Korail branch.

Tanvir Morshed Chowdhury, who heads Private Sector Engagement at JAAGO, stated that the initiative aims to broaden students' horizons and show them that professions other than those currently popular in Bangladesh exist.

By the time the students packed up their palettes, wiping green-stained fingers on the white cloths handed out for the purpose, the grey figures on the walls were still bent over their sacks, still dissolving into smoke, indifferent to the water jars drying out at their feet.

Whether any of the 15 walk away thinking differently, as Basak hoped, is not something an afternoon can settle. But for a couple of hours, at least, the gap between the gallery's grave subject matter and a room full of school uniforms narrowed to something like a shared floor.