Paintings of Narendra Pal Singh on display at the Centre for Excellence. Picture by Uma Shankar Dubey

Jamshedpur, April 17: Forty-year-old Narendra Pal Singh has been wandering in the villages of Jharkhand searching for that elusive form of mural art on the walls of tribal houses.

Awe-struck villagers find him a funny character with long beard and unruly hair, but he only wants to achieve his goal — to revive tribal art and culture. He has chosen to do so by expressing his ideas on canvas.

If one compares Singh’s series of paintings titled “La Dolce Vita” in 1995 with that of his 1997 series titled “Unending Tales”, the person would discover a shift of focus in his recent paintings in acrylic and water colour. The shift is rather nostalgic — from humans lost in small towns and villages to a series of imagery culled from the past, depicting the nature of time.

Singh who hails from Konandpur village in Navada district of Bihar is in the city to hold an exhibition of his paintings from tomorrow at the Centre for Excellence. Singh said he is “wistfully looking back at an age of innocence when happiness did not require much of breathless running around, when happiness did not necessarily mean consumerism.”

He added that he was worried about the extinction of the art and culture of the country. “When did you last see a “baeescope (kaleidoscope) or an old musical instrument or for that matter a charkha?” he asked.

“Modernisation has deprived us of the pleasures of our old culture and art. There is a need to bring them back, at least before the eyes of people. And I have chosen my paintings as a medium to showcase my thoughts,” Singh added.

The exhibition called “Looking Glass” is a step towards achieving his goal. He said: “A magician uses the looking glass to show the past, present and future. I am doing the same thing through my paintings.”

He said 33 paintings would be displayed during the exhibition, which concludes on April 21. Singh, whose work has been appreciated in the United States, Germany, Spain and Singapore at the solo shows which he held, would put strokes his brush on the canvas with acrylic, oil paint, water colours, charcoal and pastel during the four-day exhibition.

“I have worked hard to achieve my goal of reviving tribal art forms. I have interacted with tribal scholars and also have an in depth idea of their paintings and culture. Why should we forget the culture and art of our forefathers?” he asked.

According to him, he has ventured into remote villages of Rajasthan and other parts of the country for this.

“I have conducted interactive sessions with the tribals of those villages and have also tried to know more about their culture, art and tradition. I try to depict all these in my paintings,” said Singh.