Small town artist paints canvas with charcoal

Shriniwas Joshi

Baldev Panwar was born on July 20, 1991, at Kaleen locality in Solan. His mother is Shanta Devi, a home-maker, and father, Sukh Ram, an employee in Canara Bank, Solan. 

He did his schooling at his birth place and the artist in him persuaded him to further his academics in the field of art. His father encouraged him as he himself was a good artist and had nurtured the talent of painting for 20 years before joining the bank service. He had also learnt the art of woodcarving from his father Late Shaunkia Ram, who was a carpenter by profession, but excelled in that art. It will be appropriate to say that the family has the genes of fine arts in it. Baldev qualified the examination of Master of Fine Arts from Himachal Pradesh University in Shimla and also cleared the national-level entrance test in fine arts. The qualification earned him a job of arts teacher at Army Public School in Dagshai (HP) and after sometime, he was transferred to its sister institution in Kapurthala, Punjab. He resigned from the job and began joining group shows of paintings, which were arranged at several places in Himachal and outside. He had solo-exhibitions at Kullu, Naggar and at Gandhi Art Gallery in Delhi. 

Recently, he held on exhibition at the tavern of Gaiety Complex in Shimla. Though, he had his specialisation in miniature paintings, yet only a couple of these paintings were exhibited and at marginalised spaces. On being asked the reason for it, he said the miniature paintings did not fetch the price that the modern paintings did, adding that such paintings in which delicate work was required put heavy strain on eyes. 

He told me that his foremost interest was to make oil paintings and charcoal drawings. The 27 paintings, big and small, at the exhibition had quite a few charcoal drawings and I felt that it was Baldev’s forte. Life-like dogs, a baby whose eyes were speaking and the two steam engines oozing out smoke of different hue could be placed in the category of superb charcoal drawings.

The Konark Sun Temple in Odisha was built in the 13th Century from stone in the form of a giant ornamented chariot dedicated to the Sun God, Surya. Surya, in Hindu iconography, is shown as rising in the East and travelling rapidly across the sky in a chariot drawn by seven horses. The architecture is also symbolic, with the chariot’s 12 pairs of wheel corresponding to the 12 months of the Hindu calendar, each month paired into two cycles of Shukla and Krishna. So, it has 24 elaborately carved stone wheels, which are nearly 12 feet in diametre. Baldev, in his charcoal drawing, has shown the intricate carving of the stone wheel going to the last details with finesse. The row of elephants below the stone wheel and the figures in the columns having complicated relief work has been masterly done by the artist. It was of great interest and attraction to the connoisseurs of such art, who visited the exhibition.

It was Baldev’s solo exhibition, but paying respect to one of his teachers Daspreet Singh of Ludhiana, he mounted two of his abstract works here. The Department of Language Art and Culture charged Rs 2,000 per day for the tavern, where the exhibition was held, but Baldev could sell his paintings worth Rs 1, 60, 000 during the five days the exhibition remained mounted. He admitted that this was his highest sale in Himachal. He said his next solo exhibition was going to be at Nicholas Roerich Art Gallery at Naggar in the last week of June.

It is after a long gap that I have seen a good exhibition of realistic art at the Gaiety. Realism is the precise, detailed and accurate representation in art of the visual appearance of scenes and objects. It is drawn in photographic precision. Baldev’s charcoal drawings could be mistaken for a photograph of black and white era. A realistic painting titled ‘Curtain, Jug and Fruit Bowl’ produced in 1894 by French artist Paul Cezanne was sold for $60.5 million at Sotheby’s New York in 1999. It was considered to be the most expensive still life ever sold. The painting looks three-dimensional though it is two-dimensional. The fruits look so real that one feels like taking these off the table. The work transmits Cezanne’s sense of beauty and pleasure and I could smell the identical whiff of bliss in Baldev’s works. He is only 28-year-old and has a long road ahead to be covered. He will cover it by keeping in mind what Frost said: “And miles to go before I sleep”.

Tailpiece

“A great artist— a master— can look at an old woman, portray her exactly as she is and force the viewer to see the pretty girl she used to be.” — Robert Heinlein