In the book of 2023 Meera Mukherjee: Breaking conventionsThere is a beautiful anecdote about how the late sculptor’s association with art began. “It all began in the chaukhat of her house in Kolkata. Meera was sitting with her Maa decorating the entrance with alponas while the celebrations of Laxmi Pujo were going on in the rest of the house,” writes author Vaishali Shroff in this book from Art1st Books. Art exploration Series for children aged eight and above, beautifully illustrated by Shivam Choudhary. For Mukherjee, her mother’s designs represented something fantastical – how simple rice porridge took on exquisite forms. And so began her lifelong pursuit of creating sculptures from simple materials.
It may be difficult to imagine artists – modern or contemporary – as children. Did you know that SH Raza had difficulty concentrating during his childhood in the town of Barbaria in the Indian state of Madhya Pradesh? What childhood memories later inspired Ganesh Pyne to create his exaggerated, often dark, lurking creatures? Children may have heard of these artists and know their legacies, but more often than not, they view these figures from afar. However, if they knew about the rollercoaster ride of unbridled freedom, inspiration, despair, loss and grief that these artists experienced as children, they might be able to empathise with them better. And more than that, they might realise that artistic expression need not be about achieving perfection of form or technique, but should be a reflection of one’s true voice.
Today, publishers, galleries and institutions like Akar Prakar, Kiran Nadar Museum of Art and Emami Art are trying to create awareness about the childhood of artists, a facet that was previously largely unmentioned – which is sad, because the stories of their youth are as vivid and insightful as their later work. I have seen children aged five and six at the Art Room, a community studio in Gurugram, all ears as the presenters recounted moments of mischief and adventure that some of the world’s leading artists experienced as children.
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Books like Razas Bindu, Ambada’s Dancing Brush And Ganesh Pyne’s Twilight Dreams from the Art Exploration series by Art1st – an organisation that aims to build visual literacy in children and educators – have helped teenagers like my daughter and her friends develop more empathy for events like the partition of the country and the Bengal famine, which massively impacted the lives of artists like Somnath Hore. This has led children as young as seven to form associations between the uncertainty of that time and the resulting migration and what has happened during the Covid-19 pandemic. A friend’s daughter, Myra Rastogi, an 11-year-old from the National Capital Region, recently shared how sketching had a calming effect when her mother was isolated during the pandemic.
Parents often feel that grim works with emaciated skeletons, such as those seen in the art of Pyne and Hore, could leave scars on children. However, children are more resilient and have a greater understanding of the many forms grief can take. This may lead some of them, like Rastogi, to seek solace in art.
Ganesh Pyne’s Twilight Dreamswritten by Shroff and illustrated by Priya Kuriyan, reflects on art as an outlet for feelings of loss. The book looks at the images that came to the artist’s mind after hearing stories of his Thakurma, or grandmother. “I was four when I got a new box of crayons. I couldn’t resist the urge to draw on a wall. I was beside myself with ecstasy. I drew everywhere,” the book says. But everything changed when Pyne turned nine and witnessed bloody scenes of Partition. Soon after, he lost his father and his mind was filled with darkness. “The years passed and my only anchor broke. Thakurma too left to be in the same place as Baba,” the book reads. “But their stories stayed with me. There were images in my mind that were crying out for help. They were begging to be let out.” And suddenly the dam of emotions broke and just like in his childhood, he started doodling all over the place. “My paintings were free. I finally saw beauty in all the sadness within me,” it continues.
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Some of these stories also bring to the fore the random nature of life – you don’t know who or what might ignite that spark within you. So maybe it helps children to step away from the screen for a while and pay attention to the sights, sounds and people around them. Contemporary visual artist Sameer Kulavoor, whose work is based on decoding his surroundings, found this early inspiration during his childhood in Mumbai from his neighbour Sujaya Bangera, an art educator. He would often visit her house and leaf through her sketchbook. “It was around 1989-90 and she was teaching at the Children’s Academy in Kandivali. I remember going absolutely crazy looking at her sketchbook – how could someone paint and draw like that? She also experimented a lot. Once she had weaved human hair into her artwork. “She moved to another place after a year and a half but left me her diary and urged me to draw in it,” recalls Kulavoor. Although it didn’t feel significant at the time, the interaction contributed a lot to his journey into art.
When performance artist Debashish Paul watched his father at work as a child, he decided to become an artist himself. In an earlier conversation, Richa Agarwal, CEO of Emami Art in Kolkata, spoke about the story of this young queer artist who challenges notions of identity in a society dominated by heterosexual norms. Paul, who comes from a family of Subscribeor potter, saw his father making toys out of simple clay in a village in Bengal. This sparked his interest in sculpture at a young age, and today his multidisciplinary practice is deeply rooted in this art form.
Likla Lall, author of books such as Somnath Hore: Wounds and runs PanicNot!, a community and collective that practices collaborative storytelling, believes such stories could be the beginning of artistic exploration for young people. “Conversations about artists are usually seen as the domain of adults. Strange, actually, when children are artists by nature. Even before they express themselves verbally, they turn to visual expression. So when a young mind reads about another young mind, it leaves an impression,” she adds. Take the story of Gond master Jangarh Singh Shyam, who was always a creative at heart. Be it an occasion or a festival, if something artistic needed to be done, he was the child you would call. There was no pressure on him about what to do or not do. He had complete freedom to go to the river bank, pick up clay and make something out of it. “This story is important for children as well as their families. Creativity takes on a whole new quality when children are not told that the face has to look a certain way, that the line has to be drawn this way. Technique and form are found through exploration and learning,” she says.
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Many stories from artists’ early years are about learning to find comfort in uncertainty – something children today struggle with in the face of changing social, familial and political structures. Take the example of Mumbai-based Aditi Singh, known for her meditative paintings. She comes from a family of achievers – from economists to political scientists – and she was expected to emulate them. While studying economics and political science in the US, she came across Austrian poet Rainer Maria Rilke’s Letters to a Young Poet, meditations on loneliness, humanity, gender and even the natural world that, in some ways, changed her life. As a 17-year-old, the book made her think hard about courage and how to find comfort even when not everything was figured out. This one quote from Rilke still resonates with her: “We must embrace our reality in all its immensity. Everything, even the unheard of, must be possible in it.” This is ultimately the only courage that is required of us: the courage to face the strangest and most awe-inspiring things.”
“I have always been more comfortable with the unknown and art seemed to be a manifestation of that. So painting became my life’s work and not just a profession,” says Singh. When children hear or read such anecdotes, they begin to see art not just as an end result but as a healing process, a way out of the difficulties that life throws at you.
