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To art, with love
| To teach and to learn, a different kind of dedication and motivation is needed, writes T.SARAVANAN |
Inspiring Motivating and shaping young minds
Some may think that painting is an inborn talent. But drawing masters R. Siva and G. Ramanan believe it can be cultivated too. Application of and dedication to the art can help one move up the ladder of success, the duo passionately advocate. But it is their nobility that deserves appreciation. For, what they have learnt over the years, they are now busy imparting it to the younger generation under the banner Canvas.
Hailing from a family of teachers, Mr. Siva stayed focussed on his solitary objective of becoming a teacher. But the family’s dream went up in smoke when he failed to clear the higher secondary board examinations. He crossed the hurdle in the subsequent year only to be content with a berth for art teacher’s course at a Teacher Training institute.
Love for teaching
At that time the love for teaching profession was more than the art itself that forced him to take up the mantle and finish the course. But after couple of months aimless wandering, he got himself employed in a voluntary organisation.
His acquaintance with popular painter M.G. Raffic Ahamed proved to be a turning point in his life. “I started to draw much later than many of my fellow painters. Only after talking to Mr. Raffic, I could realise my artistic exuberance. I came to know about the significance of painting and how one can grow big. From that day I became a regular visitor to his gallery in West Masi Street, which helped in my understanding of the medium. Soon, I got into the groove and settled down. In the meantime, I also fell in line of my family profession when I got a job at Setupati Higher Secondary School as art teacher,” Mr. Siva reminisces.
Even there he could not resist his temptation to motivate people. “When I realised that many art teachers lag behind in their artistic capabilities, I brought them under one roof and organised programmes to sensitise them,” he says. His interest in knowledge updation in painting also propelled him to collect relevant books.
During a visit to a book exhibition at Maditssia Hall he came to know about Ramanan. “I spotted a book on rare pictures of Spanish surrealist painter, Salvador Dali, which I reserved it to buy the next day. But when I went there the next morning, I could not locate the book and I was told that Ramanan had already purchased it. Wasting no time, I established contact with him and it was purely coincidence that later both of us were employed as art teachers at Madura College Higher Secondary School,” says Siva, who has been elevated as a graduate teacher.
Ramanan’s formative years were in contrast to Siva’s. He belonged to a family of artists and photographers and grew up on nothing other than drawing materials.
Sharing similar interests both Siva and Ramanan spent more time in school discussing painting techniques and charting out ways and means to motivate students. This gave birth to “Canvas” — a forum which educates people on art and helps them develop an artistic sense.
“Art teachers are in a way to be blamed for the present situation as they have distanced the students from the art assigning them harder tasks and introducing them to difficult medium. For example, watercolours are considered to be a tough medium for a beginner in the Western countries. But here, we start with watercolours indirectly causing disinterest in the subject,” says Mr. Ramanan.
Though they started this forum with students in mind, now they are flooded with people from different age groups willing to spend the time at Canvas.
“Beginners are frightened with presentation of several ‘isms’ in painting like impressionism, naturalism, realism, expressionism and surrealism but we tend to forget about the individualism, which we are concentrating at present,” he reasons out.
Facilitators
They do firmly believe that more than the technique the interest matters the most. “Ours is a job of a facilitator. Actually, we don’t teach anything. We just provide a platform to allow people to present their artistic talent, which can be groomed. Now, what we advocate to our students is to freak out with their creativity. With plenty of sophisticated art materials around, you just have to get your basics right,” Mr. Siva assures.
They have also taken concerted efforts to introduce art history to their students. Having struggled to find a proper place to exhibit their artistic creations due to heavy costs involved in booking a gallery, they have now opened a blog, www.artsiva.blogspot.com, which provides a platform for the up and coming painters and students to exhibit their art works absolutely free.
Moreover, their classes on every alternative Sunday at the school have motivated their students to join popular institutes like National Institute of Fashion Technology and National Institute of Design.
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