Pankaj Itkelwar was born in 1982, in Bhadravati situated in Maharashtra. From his teenage days in school, Pankaj was mesmerized by the colorful odyssey of the social and religious life of his native sleepy town. Like an innocent visitor in his younger years, Pankaj was attracted towards the colorful pictorial representation of human life of Indian Gods on the walls of temples and caves and of godly heroism on thickly colored movie posters. The thing which impacted his impressionable teenage mind most was the submergence of form in the emergence of color, which itself comes from within the form. He decided to enter of the world of color, paper and story, to become an artist. Pankaj has done his Bachelor of Fine Art from Govt. Chitrakala Mahavidyalaya, Nagpur Maharashtra and Master of Fine Art from J.J. School of Art Mumbai. Pankaj’s creative journey is marked by significant recognition of artistic talent. Pankaj has been awarded various prizes for his work and it is being positively received in national and international art shows.
While looking at Pankaj’s work one can easily fascinate towards the multiplicity and brightness of color. This he says comes from the vividness of his visual memories of religious fairs, processions and festivals which he watched in his childhood days in his native village. Pankaj does not see the world in a single color and thus cannot do monochromatic work. In conversation Pankaj exudes a very enchanting positive outlook about nature and life which he believes floats like a shadow of light on the gleaming stream of a mountain river. In his images which he draws on paper or canvas, he calls upon this brightness of his emotive vision to express the harmony of opposites. Thus black crows in his images are the reflection of his desire to neutralize their inauspicious meaning in Hindu traditional thought. Similarly he wants to subdue the ferocity of tigers by pairing them with flocks of crows, as he believes despite being scary one cannot deny this fact that tigers are the most beautiful animal in the forest. Pankaj’s work expresses mellowing imagination in artistic language, the lightness of his form and vividness of his colors create a harmonious fantasy of the world. We all fantasize about our life and about everything around us and we wait for our whole lives to feel a moment when the fantasy of our heart and the reality of our world mingles and transforms into one, which we all believe is true happiness.
