A kaleidoscope of colour, radiating from a collection of paintings, surrounded and greeted visitors to the Nehru Centre in London for two weeks in April.

“Colour is the keyboard, the eyes are the hammers, the soul is the piano with many strings” was a key concept of Russian artist Wassily Kandinsky. He viewed the artist as the hand which plays, touching one key or another, to cause vibrations in the soul. A number of those individuals whose works of art were in this exhibition, have lost fingers due to nerve damage caused by leprosy and use elastic bands to hold their paint brushes steady in their hands. They are playing their “keyboard” of colours to resonant effect, stirring the souls of those who look at their paintings.

  
A favourite painting in the exhibition.
Credit © Werner Dornik                                     

The soul is stirred all the more when one learns about the Bindu Art School. This Art School was set up by Austrian artist Werner Dornik and Indian social-activist Padma Venkataraman at a leprosy colony in Bharatapuram, Tamil Nadu in Southern India in February 2005. Werner’s vision was to use his talents as an artist to introduce people affected by leprosy to paints and painting. When he saw their first works of art, he confessed he had tears in his eyes!

Artist Mr P Pichai absorbed in his brush work
Credit © Werner Dornik

Visitors to the exhibition in South Audley Street, London, this April could get some inkling as to why. If colours have a psychic effect, then the preponderance of fresh, pure reds, yellows, oranges and other keen colours in the exhibited paintings, triggered feelings of uplift. Of the paintings on display some were decorative – a number richly so. Others were simple in composition, essentials reduced to a minimum with lines of great fluidity. There were those which could be described as abstract and those which could be depicting parts of an Indian folk tale. Many were naïve. Wit was apparent in a few and a number evoked joy. The majority revealed a spark of spirit from a deep and powerful source.

The artists themselves are obviously finding their new activity very absorbing and healing, because they have told Werner that they can now sleep at night! Besides the therapeutic effect of painting the works of art are being sold locally and also at exhibitions internationally enabling this group of artists to earn a living. Not only that, every year each of these artists gives 30% of their earnings to enable others affected by leprosy to join the project and help themselves in turn restore their dignity. Muhammad Yunus, who won the Nobel Prize for Peace in 2006 for his work in setting up the Grameen Bank and extending micro-credits to the most marginalised in Bangladesh, would approve. He is advocating social business as the way forward to Creating a World Without Poverty, the title of his latest book which he was promoting in London in February.

It is to be hoped that the Bindu School will spawn similarly inspiring social and cultural initiatives.

Artists being given a palette of colours
Credit © Werner Dornik

View examples of the imagination and creativity of the Bindu artists on their school’s website: www.bindu-art.at   

Category: Europe, News and Notes