Chennai: A wall art portraying a 3D library in a city school posted by the Facebook page ‘Art Kingdom’ has been doing rounds on the social networking platform since the past few days.
It was widely-acclaimed for its creativity and the meticulous details it had. News Today reached out to the artist B Gowtham who shared interesting about the painting and its inspiration.
Like every other lad, the artist religiously obeyed his parents and pursued engineering. He calls himself a ‘self-taught artist’ and said at the age of two, when children can barely crawl, he began wielding his brush and made strokes.
“What started as a mere hobby led me ponder who I am, while on the quest, I learned what life is, which has manifested to who I am now,” said Gowtham.
While he was still in college, he was not keen in pursuing art as a career and said it happened by chance. When his family had to eke out a living, the burden of earning fell on him, he resorted to doing wall arts for profit since 2015.
Gowtham has over 125 wall arts of several kinds like 3D, doodle and painting, under his belt now. However, the business fetching profit does not make him feel complete. “Though I have been making money out of my work, my inclination has always been using my talent to propagate social messages,” confessed Gowtham.
As a social worker for the last nine years, he has been taking his art work to districts and hamlets of the State to create awareness about a host of issues.
So what made him start? “The negligence of society towards matters of contention had me do it,” he shared.
“Over time, I have experimented a lot which made me realise how much we are going against nature,” he added.
This small-time artist uses his terrace to create a social art with everyday materials and refrains from doing a social wall-art, not because he can’t, but does not wish to. “Our society has not grown to the extent of respecting a creation. I can expect posters stuck on my art or the stain of betel leaves the very second day,” chuckled the artist.
Due to this, Gowtham uses social media as the primary tool to spread the message. Sharing about one of his earlier art works, he says, “I once created an illustration emphasising on the downsides of food wastage with cereals. The materials were later given to underprivileged community. I send across the message of not wasting food and it would be unfair if I myself don’t abide by it.”
About the kind of reception, he added, “I have had strangers getting in touch with me to explain how my art has made them feel guilty and the change they wish to witness along with me.”
However, the artist does not wish to stop and stay stagnant. When asked about his plans, he gets lost in thoughts. “I have a lot of dreams. I want to create awareness on sensitive subjects through my creations and become an art director,” he signed off.