A Brush With The Colours Of Life

By: Meenakshi Kumar, Hindustan Times

TO SAY that has been dabbling in colours is to state the obvious but what makes artist Niladri Paul’s brush with colours different is that he goes beyond the surface and delves deep into the mystery of colours, their relevance and their healing potential. And ever since he started exhibiting in Delhi, his colour therapy series have found many takers.

Admitting that the need to concentrate on colour therapy aroused from his own curiosity and desire, Paul is convinced that over the years the colour therapy series has influenced his life. It has been a positive effect on my life and I am sure that there is much more to colours than what meets the eye says the artist who is a graduate of fine arts from the government of college, Kolkata.

His latest exhibition, however, is not about colour therapy. Titled evocative pigments and on at the gallery Om, it is about different facets of life. I love meeting people and travelling. That’s how I can feel the flavor of a place and depicting rightly in my works, says the artist pointing to a watercolour on the ghats of Benares. Depicting everyday life is something that I like doing and don’t want to leave it completely for the sake of colour therapy series.”

So the current exhibition is a happy co-existence of the different facets of life in muted colours and the bright, splashy watercolours from the colour therapy series. It’s just the way Paul wants his artistic life to be.

“I am glad that the colour therapy series is helping people. So I just can’t dream of giving it up”, says the artist who promises that something big, unprecedented is in the offing soon in this series from him. It will be quite different, is all he says.

Apart from his regular work, Paul can be caught at times sitting at the neighborhood cycle repair shop, blissfully welding spare parts into some artistic form. He calls it welding sculptures and is a part of his private collection which he has no plans of exhibiting in the near future.

“I just want to concentrate on my painting at the moment. It gives me immense satisfaction”, says Paul. And also adds more than a dash of colour to his life.