A revival of nature

Icon art gallery is currently host to a a series of paintings that were 17 years in the making. Artist Bhaskararao Botcha tells us about his intriguing journey

When you immerse yourself in the deepest of your passions,then neither time nor the number of years spent struggling to carve a niche for yourself hold any meaning. Bhaskararao says it took him 17 years to put up a solo show. “My journey behind this exhibition is indeed 17 years long! I wanted to do justice to what I had seen around me while I was growing up,” he explains, adding, “I grew up in the small town of Salur which was surrounded by hills and connected by rivers. The landscape around me was nothing less than a dream and it served as a major source of inspiration for me to follow my heart to becoming an artist.”

He belongs to a family of artists and started painting at the age of 11. “Painting brings me immense joy and I spend at least four hours painting almost every day, either in the wee hours of the morning where the chirping of birds provide sound to my thought or after I get back from work,” he says.

Bhaskararao who is a Master in Fine Arts from the University of Hyderabad supports his love of the art by with a full time job as that of Head of Department, B.Sc Animation Design at the Loyola Academy, Degree and Post-graduation College. “Teaching is my passion and that is why I decided to make a shift from the corporate sector to the teaching field. This way I get to do two things that I love the most; igniting young minds and painting,” he says.

He was a recipient of the Junior Fellowship from the HRD Ministry of Tourism and Culture and is also an artist in residence at the Icon Art Gallery in Hyderabad. “The Fellowship from the HRD helped me gain the recognition that a young and upcoming artist would need. It gave me confidence to move forward and work further. At present, the Artist residency programme and curator Avani Rao are both supporting me with my work and providing me with platforms to showcase my work at,” he says, smiling.

His exhibition titled ‘A Leaf and a Droplet’, is on at the Icon Art Gallery. His paintings are awash with colours, while the structures of the terrains are visions of strength. While the brilliant blues remind one of water and rains, the yellows the passing of day. Bhaskararao’s strokes create the magic, that is nature. “One of the main reasons in using a theme such as this was because I felt that the contemporary world was facing a lot of problems related to global warming and pollution. Through my paintings, I plan to send out a message that we need to save our environment and we need to act on it now,” he says.

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Category: Art & Design