Mithlesh Shyam – Gond Painting

Profile of Artist:

Mithlesh and his family belong to the Pardhan sub-group of the Gond tribe. Once highly respected as the community’s bards, the Pardhan Gonds narrated folk tales and religious epics via songs. They preserved stories in oral form, passed down over generations. Today, they do their storytelling on paper or canvas, using acrylic colours. Whenever Mithlesh was given homework in his notebook he use to fill the pages with his drawings. As a child he was scolded for such activities.

Mithlesh began painting when he was around 14 years old, learning the nuances from his older sister, Radha Tekam, who is also an artist. The siblings have followed in the footsteps of their illustrious paternal granduncle, Jangarh Singh Shyam.

Like other Gond artists, Mithlesh too has a distinctive style of executing the infilling pattern – a combination of dots, dashes and small curves that fill the larger shapes in a painting. Mithlesh is a full-time artist. His family leases out their land to a farmer to grow rice, soyabean and other crops, and gets half the produce.

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