Art for The Blind
ART & DEAL Correspondant

It would not only be difficult but extremely challenging if your eyes were blindfolded and you would have been asked to paint on a canvas.


But Krupa Shah, an artist with a mission, firmly believes that Art has a higher purpose in life. For the past 4 weeks, she was teaching a group of visually impaired kids how to paint. Using painting as a medium of expression, she is teaching them that life is all about taking up challenges and showing the world that nothing is impossible.

At Happy Home and School for the Blind, she is training these kids in creating masterpieces with their paintbrushes by simply recognising each colour by its unique smell. The colours are made of natural extract oils. And a fragrance is added to each colour to help children identify them. For instance, red smells of strawberry, brown colour smells of chocolate and white colour smells of vanilla. In this way the concepts of colour are taught to the children.

Was there any challenge in creating this magical experience for the blind kids?

While it was important for the kids to know that blindness shouldn’t deter them from painting, there were challenges in teaching them to do so. Training them in handling tools and moving them within the space of the canvas was challenging. Also, it was difficult to teach them how to create a balance between warm and cool toned colours. But what made the efforts worth it, was their willingness to learn.