Omar Adnan Alam is a precocious kid, whose inclination for art and prodding from parents has made him a promising artist. One day short of completing four, Omar, who studies at Sardar Patel School, was all smiles as his maiden solo exhibition opened at RPR Gallery at Rajpur Road in Delhi recently.
For Omar art is just a means to express animated objects he sees around him. Like any kid of his age, he likes making sketching more than painting. In fact, he likes making four feet sketches. There is no pressure on him to blossom into a full fledged professional artist. However. if he continues to excel in making deft strokes on canvas rather than scribble on the ground, he might become sooner than later.
On the inauguration day when candles were lit by seasoned artist Raja Taneja, Omar suddenly burst into tears. “Fire se koi jal jayega ”. As tears strolled down his eyes, he beseeched his mother to extinguish it immediately. After his father Adnan Alam, software engineer, consoled him with a toffee and kept him in his embrace for five minutes, he started making a sketch on the floor. From then on, he gave a practical demonstration of how love and encouragement from parents has made him confident to demonstrate his skills in front of strangers. His dedication and keenness was evident as he made a prince come alive in a sketch on the ground of the gallery. “It is Humayun; we recently went to the Mughal Emperor’s tomb at Nizamuddin and since then he has been using his imagination to make him,” said Adnan.
Ask him which are his favourite cartoon characters, pat comes the reply. “Nobita and Doraemon.”
In the exhibition, he has made a child, two abstract work besides other paintings.
First sketch
Interestingly, the first sketch he made was of fish which he had observed at an aquarium or in an animation series. Shedding light on her son’s extraordinary talent, Sahba Chauhan, who works for the Oak Foundation, said: “He made fish when he was only 14 months. Recently, he saw a goat and made hundreds of them till he got the perfect one. He made a 10 feet sketch of Humayun’s tomb on floor. He likes making dinosaurs, horses. It is hard to get him to work on paper.”
Some of the paintings look like work by an artist. How was his inclination towards art transformed into his favourite hobby? “We took him to Shefali Mehra at Art Wonder in Defence Colony. Shefali taught him the art of observing objects and how to make eyebrows, ears and teeth. He now makes faces with details like lines, eyes. He enjoys making faces of children. Interesting thing is his work is three dimensional. You can feel as if the painting is jumping out. M.S. Murthy, Lalit Kala Akademi Chairman in Karnataka, who is also child art specialist, felt Omar’s art is exceptional. Recently he started experimenting with colours.”
Aviral Jain, curator of the show, discovered his talent at his art event at DLF Promenade. After all, this kid is uniquely blessed; if he sees ducks at Lodhi Garden then for the next two days he is busy only making them till he gets the bird with right feathers and beak.
