Remand home kids’ creativity on canvas

MUMBAI, Jan 27: The images are disparate, traumatic, hopeful. In one, gypsy-bright colours streak the canvas, another contains disembodied b...

MUMBAI, Jan 27: The images are disparate, traumatic, hopeful. In one, gypsy-bright colours streak the canvas, another contains disembodied bodies, the hands and legs scattered all over. Paintings seldom associated with an idyllic, soft-focus childhood.

Yet, the creators of these images are all below 15. The works of students of the David Sassoon Industrial School, on display at the Birla Century Art Gallery, showcase the points of view of those classified as juvenile delinquents’ and are inmates of a remand home.

The exhibition, called Sushruti ’98, includes works of around 22 students of the art class, which is part of the school’s curriculum. An unfettered streak of creativity runs through the rules, regimen and schooling. Almost all the works throw up fragmented images of worlds yet unseen or of memories of a family, a village, a traumatic past somewhere. The themes range from still life to landscapes and outright abstractions.

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The works of 15-year-old Hamid S K, who ran away from home as a child and has been at the remand home since 1994, range from brown and green landscapes of school life to a fragmented Ganesha to abstract images of dismembered bodies. He says, “I feel angered by the violence surrounding me.” He prefers the abstract medium to landscapes. “I want to be a painter… I want to put my family, which I’ve troubled a lot, to peace.”

And Rajendra Pawar’s happily coloured canvases speak of a place and time now alien to him. Hailing from Nashik, Rajendra has also been with the school for the last four years. His canvases capture a world of bullock carts, mountains, farmers and a rising sun, complete with a dandy man with a hat whom he jauntily identifies as “Sanjay Dutt from the movie Khalnayak.”

The art class, said Jayalaksmi, superintendent of the school, is the one class where the boys don’t have to be dragged to. “There’s a lot of creativity in these children which has to be recognised outside the four walls of the school. The children are greatly encouraged if they get a public platform to exhibit their works,” she remarked. Their art teacher Ravindra Pawar agreed: “If the children know their art is going to be exhibited somewhere, they feel inspired to create and don’t consider art class as part of routine schooling.”

The paintings also don’t restrict themselves to an over-arching theme. Pawar said, “I only taught them the basics, how to handle the materials and colours. After that, they were given a free hand.” This is the fourth such exhibition organised by the school, and the most successful one to date, indicated by the red bindis dotting the canvases. The paintings are priced between Rs 450 and Rs 7,500. While some paint as a hobby and want to learn practical skills like carpentry and hair-cutting to survive in the world outside the home, others, like Hamid, seek their future in the medium and a world that gives them their place under the sun.