Ritanjali Hastir, Associate Editor, 5th May, 2016, Shimla
People of Shimla City got an opportunity to experience the magic of art in form of an exhibition held at the Gaiety Theatre organized by the Department of Visual Arts of Himachal Pradesh University from 3rd to 5th May. Him Chatterjee, Chairman, Department of Visual Arts, HPU expressed his joy over the students’ achievement saying, “Art is one of the powerful evocative and articulate forms of expressions of human experiences and that learning to express oneself through art is to learn the beautiful and universal languages of the human soul. So in order to spread the language of art, the Students of Department of Visual Arts have done good efforts to present their creative paintings in the form of the Art Exhibition 2016. I have seen the students growing ever since they enrolled in the Department. They worked hard and evolved their own styles. I am sure, this Exhibition will encourage them. I wish them success in life”.
During the exhibition nearly 40 paintings were exhibited that gave an insight into the minds of the young 17 talented artists namely including Rekha Sharma, Geetanjali Verma, Sheetal Bharti, Poonam Mehta, Dinesh Attry, Sushma Thakur, Anshil Sharma, Poonam Chauhan, Devrut 
Vishwakarma, Swati, Aarti, Yashodhara Raje Bundela, Ruchi Bamta, Manash Pratim Talukdar, Poonam Hetta, Sheetal Verma and Dharam Chand.
They all used various possible mediums like oil, acrylic, water color, pencil and charcoal, to give wings to their creativity. People got an opportunity to view numerous themes ranging from human life transformation, intricacy of modern life, celebration of music, Himachali culture, spiritual as well as Yoga.
For each one of them it was a moment of great joy and pleasure as their work got a platform and some of them managed to
even sell their art pieces as well. However, they even came close to the reality of life, as in Himachal, the market for such profession is not very supportive as the foot fall was incredible but when it comes to buying it was mostly the foreigners that came forward.
Like it is said, “Painting is the silence of thought and the music of sight”, over all it was a great show and one can hope to see some new bright faces changing the face of art in Himachal.
