Sundar Kanta Walker

ARTIST AND WRITER

 

 

Welcome to my website. My name is Sundar Kanta Walker. I paint under my first name and write under my second name. This helps me to harness different energies contained in the two names.

This website has a number of aims. Primarily it is to celebrate the life of my father Ram Nath Kapila who lived in a simple selfless style and whose main aim in life was to bring education to the poor. His dying wish was to set up a charity to provide bursaries for Harijan students in science subjects. Not many could afford to study science. The sales of my current paintings are wholly committed to setting up this trust. I am looking forward to hearing from companies, corporate businesses and others with links to India to promote his dream of setting up the bursaries.
Click here for a brief history of my Father's life.

My other aims are to share the happiness and joy contained in my artwork, and to raise funds for the educational trust through the sale of my paintings. I hope to present each month a new painting to share with art lovers. In my writing section I hope to have a short story of the month and the poem of the week and again have an opportunity to share my creativity with the readers. My publishing history is long and varied. My first novel Sare Mare was published in 1987 with much acclaim from Jeanette Winterson who was working with Pandora. Later, Crocus Books published many of my short stories and poems. One of these won the first prize in the North West. My poems and short stories appeared in an anthology of Cumbrian Writers in 2003. I have four novels ready for publication but the publishing world is not all that easy to access. Hence my decision to share my writing on the Web. The stories that you will read are from an anthology of short stories entitled 'Losing' as invariably someone loses something. My novel 'Return to Sare Mare' a sequel is being serialized in the Veena Magazine. I look forward to getting some feedback on my writings from this Website.

I come from an Indian Punjabi Brahmin background. I have lived in England from the age of 16 onwards and spent four years living with a Scottish family and later married into it. This has given me a first hand experience of the British culture and has provided me with a richer and broader dimension to my work. I also had the opportunity to study at three universities Nottingham, Manchester and Sheffield. I started writing fiction and poetry from a very young age, wrote my first novel at the age of 23 that was later published by Pandora.

I discovered painting much later in the eighties and was mentored by Golda Rose - a Slade trained and anti establishment talented painter. She encouraged me to develop my natural abilities but warned me to stay away from training schools. Later I did train as an art therapist and also took up figure drawing. I exhibited annually at the Rose Riverside Studios and in 89 - 90 had a touring exhibition of my paintings for nine months in the North West and Glasgow. The exhibition had positive reviews. I also had a Churchill Fellowship when I toured the North West Frontier and a residency at Lahore College of Arts and exhibited at Alhamra Art Gallery in Lahore. My earlier works were in the tradition of story telling and narrative art.

In the nineties, I travelled throughout Europe painting and exhibiting some of my work in Germany, Holland, Spain and Italy. I also spent two months painting with Fateh Al Mudaris in Damascus and with artists in Lattaquia, Syria. For the past five years I have been concerned with environmental issues and have painted with 'Save the Rocks Society' in Hyderabad but unfortunately those irreplaceable dramatic monuments to time have disappeared and have been used for house building for the wealthy. I also went to Zimbawbe and painted the rocks in Motopos Park. I now live, paint and write full time in the Lake District and portray nature through Indian eyes.

The greatest influence on my art has been my Buddhist philosophy when life is viewed as a transitory phenomenon, ephemeral and ever changing. Only the present moment matters. In my paintings I am conveying the reality as I see it. My portrayal of the human figure - a transitory, unreal phenomenon is captured in all its glory and colour. The joy and playfulness of the moment is more real. The ego and the so many roles people play such as the 'Financial Advisor' or the portrayal of the 'Solicitor' are depicted with compassion and amusement. In the meditational canvasses I have tried to reach the spiritual archetypal energies that are the basis of all great religions.