Nepal Art Council is holding an art exhibition featuring the works of grade 12 students of Sirjana College of Fine Arts. The exhibition, June 2 - June 5, is a culmination of the works of twenty students who worked throughout the academic year under the guidance of their teacher, Roshan Bhandari, towards this production. 

The exhibition is unique, in that it educates the viewers on the basic concepts of art with the effect of enabling them to better understand the final pieces. The exhibits are arranged in a manner such that the audience embarks on a journey where in they learn, and appreciate, basic concepts and fundamentals of art such as arrangement, line, eye-level & perspective, form & shape, gesture drawing & contour drawing, color therapy, spaces, rule of thirds and rhythm. Spectators not only see finished compositions with multilayered connotations but also blank papers that have been framed to scrutinize the fountainhead of any art work. The idea is that an educated viewer is a better critic. Bhandari says, “It is an educational show – something that hasn’t been done before.”

The students have worked on solo compositions as well as group to imbibe qualities of team work. Each student has nearly 5-10 featured pieces. Bhandari believes that as an artist, “one shouldn’t be let down, or held compact – they should be set free.” With that in mind, the students created art exploring multiple themes and schools of art, some of which are human anatomy, travel in Nepal, still-life, fashion and applied-art.

One of the composition art pieces is a depiction of Edgar Allan Poe’s ‘The Tell-Tale Heart’ which is a part of the grade 12 syllabus for English. Saurabh Sreshtha created a composition of his life where in he is a character appearing 5 times in the sketch with each appearance reflecting a different stage and story of his life. Another highlight of the exhibition is the section titled ‘Old Master’s Artwork Study’ that features the students’ replica of classical art, from or around the Renaissance Period. It also includes pieces that are essentially small portions of the featured classical work – for instance, that of the contemporary realist painter, Jeremy Lipking – that have been critically analyzed, and then depicted, in stages of drawing, mono-color and full-color. 

All of the twenty students are aspiring artists. Sammang Limbu shared her positive experience with the exhibition saying, “I was very nervous but the comments [reception] came better and higher than my expectations.” Another student, Subodh Bajracharya said, “This exhibition is the first step towards our career. It’ll help us gain the confidence we need.”