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Varsha Kharatmal

Varsha Kharatmal was born in a family of painters and calligraphers, to an artist father and a grandfather who sculpted.
The thirty-five year old Varsha is a rising star on the Indian art firmament and the recipient of several government awards. She has lately shown in the American city of Chicago, a remarkable feat for a woman who grew up in a small Maharashtrian town and did not attend a big art school. Critics have described the beautiful women who populate almost all of her canvasses as “Ajantesque” and luminous with “eyes that talk.”

The talking eyes bit is important, because Varsha herself has always been speech and hearing impaired.

The innocuous observation skims lightly over the struggle being differently abled means in India. Add to that the burden of chasing art, rather than a more “technical” career. “Varsha struggled with academics,” Ram says. The classroom and her teachers lacked the patience to accommodate her slow grace. Her supportive family and friends helped her pull through the difficult school years in Satara. But she started coming into her own only after she joined college, at the Kala Maha Vidyalaya, which was also the place where she and Ram met

At the Kala Maha Vidyalaya, Varsha found her voice, so as to speak, the unique vehicle which distinguishes a great artist from the competent one. And that happened when she discovered the art of Maharashtrian legend A.A. Almekar. Almekar’s ornamental, stylised figures are drawn from folk art with a dynamic, boisterous energy that jumps off the canvas. Studying them freed Varsha from the artificial, forced rigour of realism.