Ramesh Jhawar : Art that has been parked on the streets of India

Ramesh Jhawar is born to a family of Rajasthani business community. This 38 years old artist is ranked among the top water colour artists of India. Since birth he was well groomed by his parents. All the basic needs of his life were met by his father who was a first generation entrepreneur. His father migrated to Erode in Tamil Nadu to setup a hosiery trading firm. During his childhood in the early 90’s he was literally and pictorially grown up while reading the comic magazines. Then cable TV network was in the nascent stage, while internet was nowhere. He grew up fanatically with the cartoon characters like Superman, Batman and Tarzan. Then Shinchan and Pokemon were yet to be born. While joining the college Ramesh was directed by his father to get enrol in Commerce, so as Ramesh could be the scion of his business empire. Accordingly he followed the instructions of his father. In three years time though he graduated in commerce and joined their family business, but his mind was wondering in the realm of fine art.    

While sketching the cartoons he was drawn towards fine art. Since he never attended any art school or art college, he had no mentor to imbibe the right skill to learn fine art. Yet he kept exploring a field of discipline that could be ranked as creative as the field of music.  He started with oil paints. But he didn’t like their slow drying process and the strong odor it carries. More to it the materials were expensive and the paintings required much space to store, since the paper sheets cannot be folded. Then he tried his hands on pastels, but it was very difficult to protect them from smudging unless framed, which was again a costly affair and also required space. This was followed by acrylic, but found it a little difficult to handle, since it dried up very fast. Water colour was one medium, where there is no odor, no maintenance like varnish and above all, was quick and easier to handle. So he finally settled down with the application of watercolors.

Every artist is identified for a unique feature that he creates in his art works. For example the works of artist Bijay Biswal could be attributed to trains, railway tracks, railway stations and railway passengers since he is someone who works with Indian Railways and had spent a majority of his active life while travelling in the trains. On the other hand the works of artist Saroj Rout of Barpali could be correlated with rural life as he resides in a semi urban area of Odisha. The works of any artist is largely influenced by the environment that he lives. Likewise Ramesh Jhawar got a special arena where he perfected his skills. He worked extensively on the street vendors selling fresh vegetables either laden on the cycles or push carts. His other area of specialisation is perched cycles. From the below given image you could clearly count the spokes of either of the wheels of the cycle. That is not all, you could measure the shadow of each of these spokes with geometrical proportion. 

                                              
Ramesh Jhawar is someone who able to transpire the light and shadow effects on the canvas in most of his outdoor paintings. He says most of us does not like shadow or the darker side of our lives, but we need to appraise it. Shadow appears because of the presence of the light. In one of his trip to Banaras of Uttar Pradesh he virtually fell in love with this city which situated on the banks of river Ganga. He captured the colourful walls of the houses on the narrow lanes of this ancient religious city that attracts lakhs of Hindu pilgrims every year.

In the year 2011 while participating in an art

exhibition at Chitrasanthe, Bangalore an unforgettable event happened with Ramesh Jhawar. A young lady visitor showed specific interest on a portrait of Bollywood actress Sonam Kapoor. She purchased the sketch without any bargain. But in next couple of days she mailed the photograph of actress Sonam Kapoor along with this portrait. That young lady happen to be a cousin sister of Sonam Kapoor.       

                            

Another joyous occasion in his life was to attend the shooting of an episode of Kaun Banega Crorepati (KBC) at Mumbai. At the end of the shoot, Mr Amitabh Bachchan the host of the show personally came to greet the audience. The portrait of Bachchan that Ramesh carried with him caught his attention. Ramesh gifted him the sketch. While looking at the master’s work the mahanayak or the Super Star of Bollywood stood unmoved for a while. Amitabh accepted the sketch cordially with a word of thanks.

[Sparkling Ganges]

On that very evening he had to rush to Chowdiah Memorial Hall at Bangalore to attend the award ceremony of Prafulla Dahanukar Art Foundation. In the function he was felicitated by Mrs.Kiran Mazumdar Shaw. She is the Chairman and Managing Director of Biocon Limited, a biotechnology company. As of 2016, this lady was listed as the 77th most powerful woman in the world on the basis of net worth by Forbes magazine.

In case you unable to appraise his art work, than  just shut your eyes and effortlessly listen to his songs. Apart from the fine art his other specific interest is singing. He creates the music in his synthesizer or musical  keyboard and sings vociferously the Hindi songs of Kishore Kumar and Mohamad Rafi. His songs will take you to the golden era of Hindi melody dating back to the 70’s of the last Century.  Instead of following the suite of other siblings at home Ramesh Jhawar charted his own path. In the year 2010 he kicked off the secured home spun job for the sake of art. In the days to come this multifaceted icon called Ramesh jhawar would be worth a watch since in his blood cells different art forms are grooming.

kiranbima@gmail.com
Cell # +918249314972

E. Kiran Mohan (The Writer)

C/o.Dr.E.R.Rao (MD)

Tehsil Chowk,

At/PO BARPALI – 768 029

Dist. Bargarh, Odisha, India