Art for the masses

Beauty is tangible.  And makeable.  We experienced this in a lovely family art experience lead by my amazing brother Stefan.

The grandparents and two of their grandaughters at work - note Mum's flower cactuses

After we all sang Anjali's current favourite song (to the tune of Frere Jacques) "In the beginning, in the beginning, God created, God created, The heavens and the earth, The heavens and the earth, Genesis 1.1, Genesis 1.1" we had short pep talk by Stefan on what we were going to do.

We each got a small canvas and an easel of various acrylic colours.  Stefan encouraged us to thing about creation and use the theme of a tree as our departure point.  He encouraged us the explore colours and not be afraid of what it would look like - but rather to allow the brush to experiment and talk with the canvas.

And so we were off.  All of us.  Young and old.  From ages of 3 to 73.  Eichers and guest (Cherring Tenzing!).  Vertical and horizontal (yours truly).  And all along Stefan moving from person to person, encouraging, suggesting, celebrating.  A midwife to beauty.

Some of us worked on a more abstract level.  Allowing colours to speak to us - exploring the different shades that we got when we mixed and matched.

It was great to have Cherring with us for the weekend.  Her bright spirits brought more colour in - and her canvas reflected this - an abstract meeting of different shades.

Others of us were more figurative in our approaches.  Some painted flowers and plants that they could see around them - others looked out of the windows for inspiration - and painted the hills covered with trees.

But over and over Stefan encouraged us to experiment and to move outside of the comfort zones we normally work in - to see what it is like to express ourselves more freely.



Anjali and Ashish dived right in to the picture making.  Having parents that encourage their creativity is such a blessing.

The young-guns from the Delhi branch of the Eichers actually managed to produce 2 pictures each if I am not mistaken.  Shades of Andy Warhols 'the factory'?

Opa showed his application to the job by carefully working on his canvas - as the afternoon turned into evening.













And it wasn't only painting.  There is one member in the family who still has now wielded the brush.  Little Anjali was happily carried by Asha for some time while Neeru worked on her own creative contribution on canvas!















Your 'umble blogger did his bit on the same bed which this post is being typed out.

A new experience to paint on a canvas taped to a plastic kitchen cutting board - and having the paint drip down on me.  But what fun!

We are so grateful to have had a time when we were encouraged to live out the creativity that our great amazing creator-God has endowed us with.

Hats off the Stefan and all the great work his team at Art for Change (esp. the Made to Create folks) are doing!  It was great to taste a bit of it in the beauty of Shanti Kunj!