THIRUVANANTHAPURAM:
Twelve-year-old Parth Joshi of Vadodara in Gujarat walked away with the top honour while Nafisa Tabassum Authay of Bangladesh bagged the second prize as the results of the second edition of International Children’s Online Painting Competition in memory of India’s legendary child artist Edmund Thomas Clint were declared here.
Joshi and 14-year-old Authay were among the 55 winners from India and abroad for the prestigious competition, organised by Kerala Tourism. The results were announced yesterday after the jury pored over close to 39,000 works it received from the stipulated 4-16 age group across as many as 96 countries. Tourism Minister Kadakampally Surendran announced a list of 110 winners in all in various categories and 15 of them would be eligible for attractive tour packages with family. Ten of the 15 are from foreign countries.
Joshi, along with four other top winners from India, will enjoy a five-night Kerala travel accompanied by two members of the family. Likewise, Authay, along with nine other children from abroad who won the top prizes, will also be eligible for a similar tour package. Aaradhya P.G, a six-year-old Malayali girl, fetched the third prize. She figures among 40 prize winners from the host state who will receive a cash award of Rs 10,000 each. The first three prize-winners will get a certificate and a memento. Twenty other winners, too, will receive mementoes. The artists whose works were shortlisted will get special prizes, while all the participants will receive certificates.
Also, the prizes were not just for the participants. Those who encouraged children to take part in the competition won awards as ‘promoters’. They total ten—five from India and the rest from abroad. These promoters are also eligible for Kerala Tourism’s five-night package tour in the state.
Child prodigy Clint (1976-83) was Kerala’s art genius who wielded his brush with an incredible imagination to leave behind a legacy of over 25,000 pictures in 2,522 days of his life before a prolonged illness cut short his eventful existence. Born to M T Joseph (who died earlier this year) and Chinnamma Joseph, the boy’s life and works went on to earn increasing global acclaim. Clint’s life has found portrayal in seven books and two documentaries besides in a 2017 Malayalam feature film.
Clint was aged four when he topped a painting competition where a 16-year-old emerged second. That led the organisers to fix the age bracket for this online event.
The 2018 edition of the competition received a larger response than the first (2017), as the number of entries went up to 38,995 against 5,000 in the debut edition. The time for applying for the online event was September 1, 2018 to January 31 this year. The website saw 48,397 registrations from 133 countries during the period. Of the 38,995 paintings that vied for prizes, 6,542 were from abroad. Among the rest from India, 5,713 paintings were from Kerala.
The event was globally publicised by carrying out a campaign in 23 languages (11 Indian and 12 foreign), Kerala Tourism Secretary Rani George said. “We estimate the information about the competition to have reached 50 lakh people,” she added.
The online competition boosted the number of visitors at the Kerala Tourism website, according to Kerala Tourism Director P Bala Kiran. “While the portal got 40 lakh hits in 2017-18, the figure surged to one crore hits, from around 200 countries, so far this year,” he pointed out.
The competition jury comprised Bihar Museum Director Mohammed Yusuf, artists Vrindavan Solanki (Gujarat), Vipta Kapadia (Mumbai) and Prof. Suresh K Nair (Varanasi), besides Kerala Lalitha Kala Akademi chairman Nemom Pushparaj and art critic M L Johnny.
All the 55 winners, who have become eligible for the tour packages, will be given a reception at the Kannur airport upstate, taken for the travel and given away the prizes at the capital city of Thiruvananthapuram.
