Painting Enlightenment: Udaipur’s Charan Sharma

When traveling in India, there are many fantastic places to visit, and some amazing cities that have extremely lively urban scenes, and an amazing night life.  There are very few cities in the world, however, that are quite like Udaipur, and maybe it really is as unique as it seems.  When visiting here, you get the sense that this is the mythical kingdom that everyone talks about.  It is really a splendid place, with amazing sunsets, and amazing sunrises as well.  It looks and feels just like scenes in romantic movies, and it’s probably not a coincidence, because there are many films made here to take advantage of its magnificent setting.  There is a sense of luxury everywhere in Udaipur, India.  Hotel accommodations can help to make the experience complete.

We’ve selected hotels based on their excellence in hospitality and style.  Udaipur is a place to experience hospitality like no other city can offer.  It has hosted royalty and celebrities, and has a special reputation for treating guests well.  There is also a splendid sense of style here, where the best of old traditions merges with the precision of contemporary design, to make for human-made as well as natural beauty.  This compliments Lake Pichola, which is also human-made, but its existence stemming from the 14th century gives it a kind of status as a place of natural splendor.  Visitors looking for artists who are inspired by the splendor might run across the works of Charan Sharma while visiting Udaipur.

He was born in Rajasthan, and got his Master’s in Art at the University of Udaipur.  He started showing here when he was in his early 20s, and soon carried his work to other parts of India, including Bombay, now Mumbai, and Jaipur.  His work has been shown all over the world now, and he makes his home in Mumbai.  His work is a fascinating mix of styles and techniques that are lately focused on deeply spiritual themes.  He works with the notion of Enlightenment in the Buddhist sense, where everything that is perceived is a reflection of self, and the work serves to bring the viewer into another world, or series of worlds, that are utterly transcendent and very beautiful.