Samya Samanta, hails from the small city of Kakdwip in West Bengal, India. Having recently graduated from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur (2015-2020), in Chemistry, he finds himself eagerly waiting for the world to move past the pandemic so he can continue his studies with a PhD degree in the USA next year. Don't let his academic pursuits scare you off though, Samya's friends often consider him to be 'crazy, stupid, weird' and perhaps even a caring person.
Samya never received professional training in art.
"I used to like the drawing and painting classes in my high school. One tutor used to come to my home till class IV to help me with the homework. I'm truly indebted to him for instilling the interest in me. After that, I just learned by myself."
Samya was really good with the pancil from the start. He even remembers a time in his life when he was tasked with sketching animals and birds in a book.
"One day the teacher doubted that I traced the sketches from the book and scolded me a lot. I denied continuously and he was not ready to believe and he slapped me at that moment… Hahaha! I started crying and then my room-mate came forward and told the teacher that he saw me to make those sketches by myself. From that day, I was the favorite student of that teacher. He was my favorite teacher as well, not because of slapping but teaching me with utmost care."
Samya's work has brought many an accolade. Having primarily participated in school and college-level contests he's gathered a nice collection of medals and awards on account of his impressive art skills. Let's hope that this collection combined with the recent success at the TCC Sketch Contest encourages him to participate in more competitions and perhaps even host an exhibition of his works.
We are always interested to know about the stage of development our participants consider themselves to be at and so we asked him about his perception of his own journey in art.
"I’m still unsure if I want to be a professional artist or not. I love creating amazing stuffs with different medium and at the same time I love to appreciate someone’s work. I just get amazed when someone makes fabulous artwork. I want to continue my artistic path taking is as hobby for now. Maybe in future, I can start as a professional, making exhibitions, publishing works etc."
Samya is often inspired most by the circumstances that surround him. Being an emotional person at heart, he often resorts to internal loci of inspiration when it comes to creating art. With this new impetus, he tends to spend a significant time brainstorming about the concept, composition and design before he starts the actual process of putting pencil to paper. He recognizes, however, that the most important part in creating art is the mindset to do something great.
When asked about his dreams as an artist he replies,
"If money was not an issue, I want to exploit oil painting and the acrylic painting. I have a dream to draw on canvas and I love hyper realistic works and I’m also interested in making abstract textures in different innovative manners. And yeah, in my dream art project I want to make web comics/ manga famous and well accepted in India."
Samya strongly believes that artists have the power to deliver a strong message which cannot be written in thousands of words with just one art piece. Art is subtle yet strong. Further, there are many perspectives and many sides to a particular subject. Innovative and thoughtful artists can often depict different sides in front of the audience which in turn is essential to make a society progressive.
"I would love to spend a day with Leonardo da Vinci. I have a belief that, there are a lot of mysteries and deeper meaning of his works and I think he was also a scientist in his mind. drawings and notes on science and invention are intriguing. I wanna ask him about his thought process and his ideas. I’ll offer him the book ‘Da Vinci Code’ xD!"
Samya dislikes the fact that very little people appreciate artists and their works. Their blood, sweat and tears are worth much more than what many people give credit for. He believes that this is why it is so challenging to excel in the field of art especially when someone takes art up as a profession.
In general, Samya prefers if people adopt a 'plain living and high thinking' or a 'do more, talk less' mindset. Another bit of advice that has been shared with him is 'hard work will always overcome natural talent when natural talent does not work enough'. It's none other than Alex Ferguson, Manchester United Coach, who said this by the way. Needless to say, Samya is a huge advocate for working hard.
In parting, Samya comments,
"I’m not sure if I’m potent and experienced enough to give any advice. I just want to share that we should follow our heart and become honest with ourselves."
Check out his work and the work of other artists in the contest by clicking here. You may just get the inspiration you need to get started with your next project.
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