This month we are featuring the work of Ramesh Jhawar. Ramesh is a contemporary artist based in South India. His focuses on water-color art with inspirations taken from everyday India and its cultural myriads for which he travels across the country. We caught up with him and asked him some questions to understand his work better.
Q) Please tell us a little bit about yourself and how you started the journey?
A) My parents originally hail from Rajasthan but my mother’s family was settled in North Bengal. So I was actually born there and bought up in Erode, Tamilnadu where my father used to run a textile business. Since I was born in a business family, the typical Rajasthani thinking was to study commerce and manage the family business. So I completed my graduation in commerce from Chennai and started assisting my father. I was very fond of drawing since my school days. I knew nothing of fine arts then. Erode was a commercial city and there was no art awareness at all. The only art I would see while growing up were the art featured on the back of Reader’s digest, for which I started subscribing to it. Another craze was collecting comics for their wonderful drawings. I used to copy those comic characters a lot, which really helped me in understanding the human figure and the anatomy.
Fortunately, this is one profession where your skill and ability make you an artist. It doesn’t make much difference whether you’ve studied fine arts or are self- taught. On the contrary, it is good actually. I’m not influenced by any one school of painting. I’ve been able to develop my own individual style this way. But having said that, I also feel that it’s always better to study fine arts from a good institution if one really wants to pursue this as a career.
Q) How long does it take to finish each artwork?
A) Sometimes a day or two and sometimes more, depending upon the complexity of the subject and the size of the artwork.
Q) Which destination in India has been most visually appealing?
A) Of all the places I’ve been to, my favorite is Varanasi because of the wealth of its subjects.
Q) Which is your favorite city to travel and why?
A) Kolkata. Because it still has that old world charm with its magnificent architectural buildings of the past, trams, rickshaws and the yellow taxis.
PS: All the images pictured here are the property of Ramesh Jhawar. Please seek prior permission of the artist before reproducing any of it for any purpose.
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