Kalka Mandir (1997) Drawing by Animesh Roy

Animesh Roy is inspired by the furious passion of Van Gogh, the adventure and grit in Papillon and Robert Louis Stevenson, Messner for being alone with the mountains, the total irreverence and bohemia of Henry Miller, rebellious youths in The Wild One, “What are you rebelling against? What’ve you got?”, the sublime serenity of Tagore and Ray, and courage and greatness of the Mahatma.
Born in one of the most artistic places in Bengal, Krishnagar, famous for its clay sculptures, Roy has been crisscrossing since a child as his parents had transferable jobs. A sense of adventure was instilled in him as a child through treks in the Himalayas — “Walking down to Saat Taal and getting lost on the way back in the darkness.....”
Inspiration comes from adventure, travel, meeting people, visiting villages, monasteries, temples, churches, mosques, and graveyards. He would not be able to work in the confines of a comfortable city studio. Though many of his works do get physically done in a studio — the germs are born on the road, while traveling, soaking in.
Roy has been a rebel and a traveller and his natural skills are completely untrained. His artistic growth did get stunted from four years of exile in the Delhi College of Art, trying to get a meaningless ‘art degree’. He planned for a ‘break’ like Papillon succeeding with two back to back solo shows just out of college in 1992. Earning the ire of the art critics and his art college professors!
Since then Roy has had six solo shows in major Indian cities.
Roy traveled to Ladakh in 1995 in the comforts of an aircraft and called it — Travels with a Donkey — an R. L. Stevenson travelogue. He did some 100 drawings in and around Leh.
Then in 1997 onwards he went into a hiatus — reading, learning how to drive and traveling furiously whenever his budget would allow — Nepal, Bhutan, America, Sikkim, Gahrwal, Himachal, Rajasthan, Kutch, UP, Bengal, Goa, Madras. He stopped painting and exhibiting, cutting himself off from the ‘art world’. But continued quietly to do pen-and-ink drawings of places visited.
From 1996-2004 Roy did extensive pen-and-ink drawing of Delhi’s ruins: Mehrauli, Tughlakhabad, Adilabad, Sri, Sultan Ghari, Old Delhi etc., while constantly planning his next trip to Leh by road via Manali a distance of over 3,000 km from Delhi and back.
In 2004 he went back to Ladakh, this time traveling alone in his jeep, battling severe high altitude sickness, driving through some of the world’s highest altitude roads and passes. He paints this time.
Early 2006 — he visited Banares — and came back to his studio in Delhi to produce some 30 odd paintings in acrylics on canvas mostly inspired by the spring and summer of Delhi and a new found joy in his heart.
Roy is back to his first love — painting.

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The summer of 2006 Roy went back to the Himalayas… the Kullu Valley in Himachal Pradesh. Painting the waterfalls and mountainscapes on acrylics on canvas. By the time monsoon ca...

• Nationality: INDIA
• Date of birth : 1968
• Artistic domains:
• Groups: Contemporary Indian Artists