Brush With Art A Stroke Of Fortune
Sydney Morning Herald
Monday October 20, 2008
THE paintings are vibrant and colourful, and the subjects are just what you would expect from youngsters wielding brushes - houses, flowers, families, the odd train and plane, even an elephant.
The difference is that until recently none of these young artists from India had enjoyed such a childhood pursuit. Yesterday their cheerful paintings lined the walls of the King Street Gallery on William, in Darlinghurst. Like any exhibition opening, there was an air of expectation, along with champagne and canapes for the crowd. Here, however, money from the sale of works will mean the young artists from Sarnath, near the Indian city of Varanasi, can attend school and change their lives.The sale was co-ordinated by the Sydney artist Elisabeth Cummings and her sister, Charlotte Selva, who have twice visited the children's village, taking paper, brushes and powdered paints.Cummings had been involved in the Sarnath Children's Education Program, set up by two Tibetan Buddhist nuns from Australia, Tenzin Yeshe and Tenzin Dao, to raise money to send children to school. "After I sponsored a couple of children, they said, 'Why don't you visit?' I'd always wanted to go to India but had always been hesitant," Cummings says.She made her first trip last year and when she returned in February she had the idea of bringing paintings back to Sydney and selling them to raise money.The 51 works went on sale yesterday for $220 each, which Cummings hopes will go a long way to raising the $120 it costs to send a child to school for a year."These children had never painted, ever. But they just took to it," she says. The Sarnath program began in 2003 when Yeshe and Dao got to know a rickshaw driver and his family, among the poorest people in the village of Baraipur, and organised sponsors to send his four children to school.Friends in Australia asked if they could also become sponsors, and the program now covers 110 children and offers two literacy classes for women.School is a luxury that few villagers can afford as they eke out a living labouring or selling goods. "But once one child in the family gets a decent education, when they're older they will want their children to go to school as well," says Yeshe.
© 2008 Sydney Morning Herald