Art Exhibition: ARTISTIC EXPRESSIONS BY AMIT MAKWANA

Artist Rupa 'Bawari' lighting the lamp at the inauguration

Artistic Expressions by Amit Makwana was inaugurated at Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastu Sangrahalaya (Prince of Wales Museum) at 5.30pm on November 9, 2011. For those interested the exhibition will be open from 10 am to 7 pm at the venue until November 13, 2011.

At the entrance

I reached early to take pictures without the crowd. I reached there at about 3.40 pm to be welcomed by the artist, Amit Makwana and his wife, Kruti. They were very happy with the response that they had got at the exhibition at Jaipur and were quite confident that it will be as good here in Mumbai. I wish them all the very best!

The hall where the exhibition is being held

The hall at the museum was huge and the poems and digital art by Amit Makwana along with the paintings by Anuradha Thakur and Shefali Chauhan were displayed all over and made for a beautiful ambience.

Artist Rupa, her husband, Artist Amit Makwana & his wife

The Chief Guest, artist Rupa 'Bawari' arrived at the venue at 5.30 pm along with her diamond merchant husband. Click on the artist's name to go to her website and know more about her.

Celebrate Life Forever - art by Anuradha Thakur, Poem by Amit Makwana

I spent a while longer at the exhibition as my friend Nilima Kadam arrived there to catch the show. Click here to read her blog on the same. My daughter Vinitha also landed up there to check out the poems and artwork and enjoyed the show.

Love-The Art of Living - Digital Drawing by Amit Makwana, Painting by Shefali Chauhan

Snacks and cold drinks were served to all the guests. The event had been organised by Nandita Choudhury of Media Pulse Public Relation.

Artist Amit Makwana & wife Kruti, his inspiration. The digital art behind is 'I Wish You a Happy Birthday,  My Love'

Newspaper Coverage of Jaipur Exhibition

These are some of the paintings that were on display. All are by artist Anuradha Thakur. I simply loved them.

Painting by Anuradha Thakur

One more artwork by Anuradha Thakur

Also by Anuradha Thakur

Click here to read my interview with Artist Amit Makwana. 

Art & Poetry: ARTIST AMIT MAKWANA

YOU ARE A WOMAN
1. Poem by Amit Makwana; 2. Digital Art by the same artist; 3. Painting by Anuradha Thakur; 4. One by Shefali Chauhan

I went to meet Amit Makwana at his office at Borivli to talk about his upcoming art exhibition at Prince of Wales Museum.


Makwana writes poetry and gives life to them by creating Digital Art as another form of expression of the same words. Born and brought up in Mumbai City, the artist is an interior designer by profession. With his digital arts potential I wonder whether he went to graphic design college.


Makwana used to be pretty good academically and hence, despite being good at art and winning drawing and colouring contests at school, he opted to study Digital Electronics.


After working with HCL for a while, Makwana presently works with his brother builder Dharmendra Makwana in their family business. He did a number of projects along with his father and brother and learned designing on field.


Now, Makwana is an established Interior Designer who works with NGOs, designs logos, brands and more. His company is Makwana Designs and he has branched off into Ripples of Art, which is an expression of both his poetry and art.


While Amit has been writing even during his school days, he has been doing it on a regular basis since five years.


So what does he write about? Anything that touches his heart! He writes about his Mom, Dad, his babies, Woman, Romance, Sensuality and more. What interests the artist most are The Tri-colour and when a woman becomes a mother.


Amit writes poems voraciously. Sometimes on a daily basis and at times it takes a whole month before he writes anything. He writes with pen on paper, directly on to his computer and many times on his mobile too. Once he gets the words right, the artist sets out to create Digital Drawings out of them. He creates them on AutoCad, then transfers them to Corel Draw and finally creates a Jpeg image.


The ideas burst forth suddenly. Amit feels very restless and moved and over a period of time he has come to realize that it is his creativity waiting to burst forth. Nowadays, whenever the feeling arises, he immediately puts pen to paper or fingers to his keyboard and sets out to create his poems.


He has a tale to tell for every poem that he has created. One of them was when he got engaged to Kruti, his wife. The poem and art work are both titled ‘I Wish You A Happy Birthday, My Life’. This work had gone on display at the art exhibition the artist had held at Jaipur in November 2010. The audience had been highly appreciative and had been very keen to meet Kruti Makwana after seeing this work.


There is more! Amit’s younger daughter Yashvi (now 2 years old) had been admitted to ICU when she was barely a month old. The doctors had given up on the baby as her breath had stopped for almost a minute. That’s when Amit came up with the poem ‘I Love You So Much My Baby’ and subsequently a drawing to match. The baby survived, of course! Amit’s elder child is Palaksi who is 6-years-old.


Then there is the one on the SUCCESS LADY. I liked this one the best. The title is ‘She Is Waiting For Me’. Amit believes that Success is awaiting him and he need not go rushing around looking for it. He believes that life is a flow and need not be struggled with. A wonderful concept, indeed!


I feel that Amit should give a short write-up of what went before he wrote a poem. This would definitely make them more interesting to the public.


Not that the artist is very keen on pushing his works. He has published three books of his. Book 1 has only his poems. Book 2 contains both his poems and digital drawings. Book 3 has his poems, digital drawings and the paintings that have been done by other artists on reading Amit’s poems. All books have been printed and published by Amit Makwana. He has not sold any of his books or his other works. Amit gives away his books to people who show interest in them. He is holding exhibitions to show his works to the public. As of now, he has no plans of selling his works, unless he finds someone who is passionate to own them.


Amit says that the people who visited his exhibition spent at least a couple of hours reading his poems and comparing them against his drawings. Amit has taken a step further and has commissioned two artists to express their views of his ‘words’ through their painting. The concept appears unique and Amit is keen to take on artists who he feels will bring life to his ‘words’ by being able to understand them from the depths of their hearts.


The artists who have painted Amit’s poems are Anuradha Thakur from Ahmedabad and Shefali Chauhan from Baroda. Amit got introduced to both through the internet.


You can connect with Amit Makwana on his email: info@ripplesofarts.com
Website: www.ripplesofarts.com


In case you want to set up a meeting with the artist, you may contact Nandita Choudhury on 9869571695 / 022-26848022


Catch Amit Makwana’s art exhibition:


Artistic Expressions by Amit Makwana 
Date: November 9 to 13, 2011 
Timings: 10 am to 7 pm
Venue: 
THE MUSEUM,
Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastu Sangrahalaya,
(formerly Prince of Wales Museum),
159 / 61, M.G. Road, Fort,
Mumbai - 400023

Art & Poetry: A NOVEL EXPERIENCE

PARIKRAMA

While I have been handling event listings for so many years, I have not had much experience in seeing art shows and the like. The event that I went to last evening was absolutely novel to me and believe me, it was a mind-blowing experience.

Gallery Pradarshak is celebrating their 17th anniversary by holding exhibitions of 17 different artists over 17 days from June 6 to 24, 2011.

Artist Sanjay Kumar with his mixed media work on display

Yesterday, June 15, saw the display of artworks by artist Sanjay Kumar. There was also a poetry reading session by the same artist. Yeah, the man writes poetry as well, in Hindi.

Hailing from Patna and with a BFA degree from the university there, Sanjay Kumar has been living in Mumbai since 1993. He has no less than 30 years of art experience. He has had five solo shows so far, the last one being at Tao Art Gallery in 2009.

One more from Lord Buddha series

The artist does an in-depth study of his subjects before setting to work in great detail in mixed medium. While earlier he had worked on subjects such as ‘Kaali’ and ‘Shiva’, the latest batch of figurative works in mixed media at Pradarshak are all about Lord Buddha. The detailing in ink & conte (that’s a type of charcoal stick for ‘anaadis’ like me) is nothing short of amazing.

The Book published by Tao Art Gallery

While Sanjay Kumar is a full-time artist, he writes poetry whenever inspiration strikes him. Poems just spring out of him at different times in his life, following no fixed pattern. I don’t understand poetry. Yeah, I love listening to songs and can well relate to the lyrics by Bharatiyaar, Vaali and Kannadaasan in Tamil while I love those written by Gulzar & Javed Akhtar in Hindi. But reading poetry in whichever language is just not me.

Sanjay Kumar reading poetry from his book

Yesterday evening, listening to Sanjay Kumar reading poetry from his book “लो मैं झूठ लिखता हूँ!” was a soul-stirring experience. He read about 20 poems and also explained each circumstance under which he had given birth to every poem. Beautiful! 

Pages from the book designed by Rajesh Pullarwar

There was this poem that had been inspired by a thought shared by the artist’s friend, Mr. Rajesh Pullarwar. Mr. Pullarwar explained it himself. “When you are very angry, fill a mud pot with a colour powder of your choice, any colour that represents anger to you. Then break it by smashing it on the ground. Seeing the smashed pot with the colour powder spread around in an unplanned pattern takes away the anger.” A lovely way to ‘lose’ your temper, I thought. Incidentally, it was Rajesh Pullarwar who designed the book of poetry written by Sanjay Kumar. I am sharing some of the photos that I captured of the book – all the backgrounds were taken from different angles of Sanjay’s art studio. You have to see it to believe it.

Some more pages. Yeah, that's the artist on the right

Some of Sanjay Kumar’s works decorate the walls of the plush home ‘Antilia’ belonging to Mukesh Ambani. The artist believes in doing his bit to society and has donated a print machine to Patna College of Art.

I sincerely thank Ms. Savitha Hira, owner of Gallery Pradarshak, for this lovely evening. Savitha has been an e-friend since Mumbai Mirror days and I got to meet her for the first time after 6 years. :)