Singing colours splash on life's empty canvas

Spring brings two city veterans mounting their tryst with art

- Nirupama Dutt

Meadows of Life-Scape at Government Museum is a spectacular display by Madan Lal, a young man who came from Talwandi Bhai, near Punjab's Moga, to the Chandigarh College of Art in 1982 to realise his dreams of studying a discipline that was close to his heart.

The road to this realisation was not an easy one and it meant hard work, exposure to new learning, nights awake on the terrace of the senior magical painter Raj Kumar and in the company of Sidharth the mendicant painter, story-teller Mohan Bhandari among others, listening to the night-long stories of Laali the 'Sawant' of Patiala. This was indeed the best artistic school of learning the arts outside the predictable and often stuffy and convoluted classrooms that our fledgling city of Chandigarh had to offer.

Indeed, Madan Lal has returned more than he got from the young city built by Corbusier.

The past decade has seen him climb step by step to rise and shine as a painter whose versatility has seen him find recognition home and abroad and also seen his creations go up the fortune graph.

Elaborating on his work, art historian Saroj Rani aptly says: "He is well-versed in the language of colours which speak out and play musical tunes in the hands of the artist."