Celebrating women's power creatively

At 'Lumiere', an art exhibition at Carpe Diem, Majorda, three Goan women are proving that it's never too late to follow your passion. Possessing a love for art since their childhood days, despite the absence of professional degrees in fine arts. Rima Dhume Laud, Medha Monteiro and Lucia de Sousa have let their passion for art lead them along this creative path.Each of them has her own mix of styles, and as a group, they have explored various mediums, held together by the common theme - Goa - as we would like to remember it. The exhibition is curated by Naguesh Rao Sardessai who believes in the fact that women have this innate power to create.

Rima's use of strong colour texture and vivid imagery Lucia (known to many as Malush), nature, old-fashioned architecture, sea, fisher-folk and basically everything she sees in Goa motivate her to paint. She says, "I have been painting for a long time, and earlier I took weekend painting classes as my work didn't permit me to give more time to this hobby. However, around three-four years ago, I decided to take voluntary retirement and give more time to art. Around a year and half ago, I met Beena, and with her, I started taking this passion of mine even more seriously. Beena motivated me, and said that if we are doing some good work, we should show it to the world. And thus we came up with the idea of this exhibition. "Some of Lucia's work on architectural landscapes of heritage spaces in Goa are extremely detailed and capture close to photographic visuals while other works focus on the calm waters where villagers are busy with their daily routines of fishing, transporting flowers via waterways in serene environments, etc.

Medha Monteiro shares a similar story as she talks about talking too long to finally consider painting full time. "I always loved painting, and during my school days, won several prizes in art contests. However, later, as I took up hospitality as a profession, painting got left behind. Later, nature's beauty inspired me to try my hand at painting again, but I lacked the training. And I couldn't pursue training as I was stuck with professional commitments. Around 10 years ago, I decided to take up painting seriously again. Due to my age, initially I couldn't find a trainer, but eventually managed to get into a course at Bal Bhavan. Thus, my affair with painting resumed, and is still on," says Medha.

The woman behind the success of the artistic journey of Rima, Lucia and Medha is Beena Gangani who recognised the potential of the artists inside them and encouraged them to create great works. "I have been training Medha for around three years, an Lucia and Rima for one and a half years, and it has been wonderful to work with all three of them. These three students I have trained. They have a creative perspective towards their work, so it was interesting for me to help them give direction to their passion," asserts Beena, who is extremely proud of her students.