KATHMANDU:

Siddhartha Art Gallery has never seen so many aspiring artists running around in excitement all together. Their excitement was partly due to the opening of their exhibition, Colour Games, on March 16 and partly due to their child’s play, they are after all artists between the ages of three and 12 years.

The students from the International French School of Kathmandu added a youthful burst of colour at the gallery on March 17 and 18. The exhibition was a year’s collection based on the students’ curious wonderings, field trips and observations of Kathmandu.

“Even people who are not our parents are going to look at our pictures,” said a shy eight-year-old Tsiala Corboz Werntz. “It’s strange.”

This is not the first time their paintings are being exhibited, but it is the first time in a ‘real gallery’.

Lucy Rana, one of the art teachers at the school who started collecting the paintings for the exhibition, said many simply didn’t understand the concept of the word ‘gallery’. ‘Exhibition’ was enough to induce their celebrations.

“They have a very visual memory, they observe on the streets and put it on paper,” said Rana. She said this sort of exhibition is a good tool to encourage the children by accepting and appreciating their work. It wasn’t just enthusiastic children eager to look at the paintings, but also proud parents.

The paintings’ subjects could not have been more varied as one child’s mind soared to the starry sky, another’s to the wild life and others to the huts and temples and people of Nepal. The incredible colour-combinations, the confident brush strokes and the crayon art works gives a little view into the creative minds of children, not to mention their imagination.

Along with the exhibition of their work, a film based on the students ephemeral art works was also screened. Ephemeral art is the temporary, never lasting, works they did on the school playground, on the street pavements, on trees and stones that were wiped off by nature the next day, but it was captured on film.

The school plans to do more exhibitions like this in the future. — HNS