Vishwa Vinayaka

I am Alka Goel; a Tanjore painting artist for close to 15 years. My journey as Tanjore painting artist has been long and enriching and is still continued.

It was around 2001 that I joined classes for Tanjore paintings. During these classes I learned the basic techniques. I clearly remember that for my third work my teacher didn’t charged her fee citing the reason that I had done this work all by myself. Encouraged by this I started working on more of paintings. During this time only I happen to come across this picture of Ganapati in dancing pose with his mouse under his feet. All black Ganesha decked with gold jewelry was very striking to eyes. I decided to take up this challenge since otherwise Tanjore paintings were recognized for its bright colour combinations only and here I was using only hues of black n brown.

It was not an easy task since I was no expert painter, never trained about techniques of uses of poster colours. Mostly it was instinctive. But grace of Ganesha was with me and I was able to create this master piece to my satisfaction.

Since my childhood my ultimate critic for any creation was my father. It so happened that he was around while giving finishing touches to this work and as per his suggestion I used red colour in the base and voila the look of overall work was totally spell bound. Around same time I had attended a dance drama about Ganapathy by the name of Vishwa Vinayaka hence the name Vishwa Vinayaka was given to this work of mine.

Initially I was not ready to recreate this work of mine, but the kind of appreciation showered on this and constant demand of my clients made me to create more of the same work with some small changes here and there.

This present work is the largest I have made in this. Its apprx 30”X24” in size.

About VISHWA VINAYAKA

Ganesha, the son of Shiva and Parvati is the first deity to be worshipped during any religious ritual as he is considered the remover of obstacles.

  His huge body represents the Universe and trunk the Pranava or Ohm, the symbol of the Brahman. His elephant’s head denotes superior intelligence. The noose he held in his hand reminds us that worldly attachments are a noose. The hook in his hand is to prod us towards the path of righteousness. The broken tusk in his hand used as pen is symbol of knowledge and sacrifice which he used to write the epic Mahabharta .The modaka in his hand remind us of the sweetness of one’s inner self.

The physical form of Ganesha reminds us that real beauty is inner beauty, the spiritual perfection.Similarly his vehicle, the rat tells us the importance of smallest of things existing in universe.