Nagpur artist with a golden touch

Manish Sakharwade / TNN / Nov 11, 2007, 00:50 IST

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Anjali Kanoria is one of the city's few artists working on Tanjore paintings, a traditional form of painting in which real gold forms an inherent part.

NAGPUR: She is an artist with a golden touch. For, Anjali Kanoria is one of the city's few artists working on Tanjore paintings, a traditional form of painting in which real gold forms an inherent part.
What started as a childhood hobby now keeps Anjali occupied for most of her time. Though she hails from Lucknow, her marriage with Chaitanya Kanoria, himself a singer and guitarist, brought her to Nagpur about nine years ago in 1999.
In between fulfilling her duties as a housewife, taking care of her two children, Nandini (8) and Arindam (4), and constant encouragement from her artiste husband, Anjali dabbled with this style of painting and turned a professional Tanjor artist three years ago.
Says Anjali, a science graduate: "It is a time consuming and expensive art form which involves the use of 24-carat gold foils and coloured stones that are highly priced and not easily available. I get all the goods I require for my paintings from Chennai."Anjali says: "I adopted all the things that go into making this art form—expensive raw materials, aesthetics, dedication and above all, a lot of patience. I spend hours on one painting but once it gets ready, I can afford to pat myself for a job well done."

Radha Krishna, Ganesh and Krishna are Anjali's favourite themes for Tanjore painting. Other themes that are in vogue are Balkrishna, Lakshmi, Ram durbar (Depicting Ram, Sita, Bharat, Shatrughan, Lakshman and Hanuman) etc, she says.
So what makes Tanjore paintings expensive and distinctive? The entire process has to be very meticulous. In Tanjore paintings, the first step is to trace some design on a cloth that is affixed on a wooden board. This is followed by embossing by using a fluid made with chalk and Arabic gum. The next step is sticking coloured stones and gold foil. The final stage is the most important of it all—painting, using poster colours, she says.
Within a short span, Anjali has carved out a niche for herself among connoisseurs of art, from different parts of the country apart from Nagpur, Bangalore, Mumbai and Varanasi.
"The city is a gradually emerging market for artists. Art is highly appreciated in the city and now a number of city artists, who otherwise looked to metros and other big cities to find buyers, are finding them in Nagpur itself," she said.

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