In a recent rally in Karnataka’s Mangaluru, Prime Minister Narendra Modi praised the hugely popular ‘Angry Hanuman’ portrait, often patched on car windshields in the country.
According to DNA, speaking at the city’s Nehru Maidan, Modi said, “I want to applaud artist Karan Acharya whose Hanuman portrait has captured the imagination of people across India. This is a laudable achievement and is the power of his achievement, talent and imagination. This is the pride of Mangaluru. All TV channels queued up for his interview”.
The prime minister’s appreciation of his artwork made the artist both happy and shocked as he said that at first, he did not believe it and had to check the video of the rally to verify that his artwork was indeed praised by the PM.
"I didn't believe at first... but one of my friends texted me that the Prime Minister praised my painting", Karan Acharya told ANI.
Acharya categorised the PM’s praise as “the biggest achievement of his life”.
Acharya is a native of Kumble village in Kasargod district of Kerala. He had designed the image in 2015.
When I saw his video, I was shocked and happy. I feel this is the biggest achievement of my life, as my work grabbed the attention of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.Karan Acharya, Artist to ANI
Talking about his design, he said it started when his friends forced him to paint a flag for Ganesh Chaturthi, adding that they thought about several gods but ended up making a design of Hanuman as they themselves are Hanuman devotees.
He said that he wanted to do something unique and that the portrait depicts “Hanuman's attitude face", not an angry Hanuman. "We wanted to make a unique artwork. That is the reason I thought of portraying an attitude on Hanuman. Generally, we get many images of Hanuman on Google but this is a little different as I used orange as the background and just a single colour on it", the artist said.
The orange colour, which I have used is just to symbolise the god, not in support of any political party. It took just half-an-hour to complete the artwork.
"What more could an artist want than seeing his painting everywhere", he asked.
The artist further said he got encouragement from his family, as his parents themselves are artists.
(With inputs from NDTV and ANI.)
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