panaji tanish kinalkar always had a passion for music even performing on the national stage in a television programme but the class ix student who is fully visuallyimpaired was always worried by paintingthat was until two weeks ago when a mentor artist premanand chari helped him understand colours in the language the boy understood best musical noteson the first day i was so worried i never wanted to attempt painting i thought it was hard but sir played the flute for us and explained the colours through musical notes after my first attempt at painting it felt so easy i painted whatever came to my mind said tanish a student of lokvishwas pratishthans school for visuallyimpaired children at dhavali pondaharsh dhargalkar a class vi student from the same dhavali school brought to life billu his pet cat as only the boy knew him through touchnot only did the visuallyimpaired students receive professional training in painting for the first time in their lives their paintings are part of a twoday exhibition in collaboration with bambolkar art gallery ponda leaving visitors stunnedsoil thread leaves used to explain painting to childrent he paintings reminded me of robert motherwell and jackson pollock said artist naguesh rao sardesai a visitor at the opening of the exhibition we are all possibly connected through the universe and it is some unknown connection which appears to have created the paintings through the students uday chari who was one of the mentor artists to the students said that he was initially worried about teaching painting to visuallyimpaired children who had no reference of what a house a tree or any structure looks like i then explained colours to them by saying how some colours are heavy like iron and some are light like cotton while others like red are somewhere in between i also made an attempt to teach using texture like tape on canvas said chari while only two of the children siddhi govekar and varad kannur have partial vision rest are fully visuallyimpaired including amintaj sayyed tukaram gaonkar shankar honur and akshay salelkar the children may not have seen but they have eaten a samosa or an apple for instance i explained geometric shapes to them at first like how a samosa is triangular and an apple is nearly round they already had prior knowledge of music so explaining colours to them through notes was possible initially the children only moved the brush in circular movements but gradually began to get the hang of it said premanand similarly artist sagar naik mule explained painting through the touch of soil to students while other artists like bhisaji gadekar anant kamat bambolkar vaishnavi shankhwalkar sudin kurpaskar and rohit bhonsle made use of means like thread leaves and other such textured items once the painting was done the artists said the students were eager to know how their artworks look i have taught visuallyimpaired children for the past 18 years but when my student painted a cat through