Family art workshop

On the occasion of the art exhibition of Nayaswami Jyotish’s paintings and prints, a family art workshop was organized at Ananda Sangha Pune. This workshop was conducted by Milind Sathe on behalf of Art India Foundation. As the name suggests, this art workshop was created for the entire family. It was good to see many families attending this art workshop which included a drawing and painting session for the members from three generations. One could see small kids, their parents as well as grandparents.

Art workshop details and flow

Painting images

After an introduction by Adityaji, Milind Sathe started his presentation. Milind screened images of several medal winning artworks by children and talked briefly about each of the artwork and the child or young artist. After screening images of child artists, images of paintings by senior professional artists were screened.

Interactive session

After screening images of paintings by child artists and young artists, Milind started with an interactive session with the audience about what they had seen.

Each workshop participant was asked to state the painting they were impressed with. The workshop participants were eager to share their favourites without any hesitation or inhibition. As each participant narrated one or more paintings they were impressed with or remembered, that particular painting image was shown again on the screen. Then followed a very interesting discussion about that particular painting by several participants in the workshop. Each commented on what they felt about the painting being discussed. This was truly a meaningful interaction.

It was remarkable that everyone across all age groups participated in the discussions. The children had their own views. It was good to see children having their independent opinion.

Observations and comments

• The participants loved the session of screening of images of paintings by child artists and professional artists. They responded enthusiastically to each of the artwork being displayed.
• The interactive session was a big success with several participants commenting on the paintings
• A very interesting and insightful comment came up during the discussion. One of the participants commented that while they enjoyed children’s art, they did not really enjoy looking at the paintings by professional artists. Furthermore, he commented that children’s art looked genuine and a free expression of what they felt. However, the art by the professional artists did not appear to be a genuine and spontaneous expression. It was more of a measured and calculated creation, which was designed for selling it. Therefore, it lacked the appeal that was inherent to child art.
• The above comment was wholeheartedly endorsed by all the participants.

Drawing and Painting Session

After the wonderful interactive session with the participants of the family art workshop, papers and oil pastels were issued to the participants for a drawing and painting session. The pictures from this drawing and painting session speak for themselves. Each one of the workshop participant was immersed in creating their artwork.

There were some participants who mentioned that they were actually painting after many many years. Some mentioned that they the last time they painted was may be 35 years ago when they were in high school. It was good to see everyone shed their inhibitions and get down to expressing themselves through art. That was in any case the objective of this workshop.

We would like to put on record our sincere thanks to Adityaji, Shamini and the team at Ananda Sangha, Pune who ensured that this art workshop was a big success. We would like to thank Nayaswami Jyotish and Nayaswami Devi for being present during this workshop and encouraging the participants.

See brief video clip of the Art Workshop

See nature paintings by Nayaswami Jyotish at the art exhibition at Ananda Sangha, Pune