Still life Painting

I am a practicing artist living by a small meandering river Dulung, on the margins of a tiny village-turning-to-a-town. My principal activity includes teaching children to draw and paint. I believe their way of looking at the world is way apart from how we grownups see reality. A child's world view is more surreal, resembles some kind of magic realism-- as opposed to the pragmatic vision of us, elders. This, you can say, is my chief source of inspiration... and even the subject of many of my artworks. In some way I strive to be a life-long-learner. I've been impressed by the 20th Century impressionist, swayed by the sketches of da-Vinci, Turner, Manet... and of course Dali. I'm attached to a circle of contemporary artists of my locality who work with different medium from painting to sketches, photography to sculpture, installations and experimental art forms. Their works make me think deeply, pick up an idea once in a while and keep me going. My works over the last decade-and-half include a variety of tastes from small charcoal to occasional etchings, interluded by a period of water-colors and a long stretch of oil paintings. Most of my recent artworks use natural color hand-ground from different soil-textures, rocks, and sometimes extracted from leaves, fruits or seeds. I prepare them myself in a marble mortar and pestle-- dry them, and mix the semi-ground pigment grains with a glue to give the effect of a natural grainy hue with a permanent fix.