Jamshedpur: Many children on city outskirts or villages may paint well but not know what to do with their talent due to lack of exposure.

A Jamshedpur-based art gallery, Off the Wall in Sakchi, decided to bridge the gap.

On Thursday, ADM (law and order) and self-taught artist Subodh Kumar inaugurated a four-day annual art camp hosted by the Sakchi gallery with 16 artists from Jamshedpur and across the country that will also inspire students of rural and semi-urban areas to think of art beyond a hobby.

On Friday and Saturday, 12 art students from areas such as Baharagora and Chaibasa will come to the camp to observe and learn from the senior artists painting there.

Curator of the gallery and an artist, Jamshedpur-based Prabir Shaw explained the concept of rural art students visiting a camp for senior artists.

"Many students in rural areas learn art but don't know what to do beyond a point. It remains as a hobby and never takes the shape of a career. We will give them some mentoring and knowledge about how the art industry works so that they can dream big. Also, there are many traditional tribal artists whose work should be marketed properly," he said.

Interactions with a veteran artist like Ranchi's Haren Thakur will inspire rural students, Shaw added.

Incidentally, ADM Kumar is also one of the participating senior artists. Others taking part include Anil Kumar and Manti Sharma from Varanasi; Brajmohan Arya from Jabalpur; Raghunath Sahoo from Bhubaneswar; Praween Karmakar from Ranchi; Pradip Maitra, Shyamal Sikdar, Biraj Paul and Sanjoy Banerjee from Calcutta; and Joydeb Chatterjee, Mukta Gupta, Uttam Mullick, Anupam Pal and Shaw from the steel city.

There will be a sit-and-draw competition for students, gallery owner Divya Taneja said. On the main camp, she enthused that all senior artists had distinctive styles, from minimalism to mythology.