CD. Jain

2005 - 06 Worked as a Art Consultant for UNICEF, World Vision and Save the Children - India.

  SOLO EXHIBITIONS

1988 : Alliance - Francaise, Thiruvananthapuram
1993 : Sarala Arts Centre, Chennai
1996 : Contemporary Art Gallery, Kochi
1997 : Gandhi Museum Art Gallery, Madurai
2001 : Lalitkala Akademi , Chennai
2004 : Lalithakala Akademi Art Gallery, Thiruvananthapuram
2007 : Karnataka Chithrakala Parishath, Bangalore
2008 : State Gallery of Fine Arts, Chithramayee, Hyderabad
2008 : Lalithakala Akademi Art Gallery, Thiruvananthapuram

  GROUP EXHIBITIONS

1988 : Kerala Lalithakala Akademi Exhibition, Kochi
1988 : Graphic Print Exhibition, College of Fine Arts Gallery, Thiruvananthapuram
1990 : Regional Art Exhibition, Chennai, Bhuvaneswar and Calcutta
1996 : Regional Art Exhibition, Chennai
1996 : Kerala Lalithakala Akademi Exhibition, Thrissur
1996 : International Mail Art Show U.S.A
2003 : Kerala Lalithakala Akademi Exhibition, Thiruvananthapuram
2004,2006 : Kerala Lalithakala Akademi Exhibition, Kochi

  ART CAMPS

1995 : All Kerala Artist's Camp, Kasergod, Kerala
1997 : South India regional Artist's Camp, Chennai
2009 : National Painters' Camp, Alappey

  AWARDS

1986 : Kerala State Forest Department Award
1997 : Kerala Lalithakala Akademi Award
1998 : Rippon Kapur Fellowship

  COLLECTIONS

Private Collections in India, U.K., Germany, France, Holland, Norway, Sweden, Denkmark, U.S.A, Australia and Haiti

  MEDIA COVERAGE

"Total Commitment" The Hindu 4 Oct 1996

"Child rights in line and wash" The Indian Express 16 Nov 1997

"Fighting a cause through paintings" The Hindu 28 Nov 1997

Artist looks at children who have missed their todays" Udayavani Morning News 15 Sep 1998

"The card matters" The Hindu 11 Dec 2001

"For children's sake" The New Indian Express 27 Dec 2001

"Cries and laughter in the dark" The Hindu 10 Jan 2002

"Children of a lesser God" The Hindu 27 Nov 2004

"Untold miseries" Kerala Calling Dec 2004

"Sea surf, no more a nightmare to these tsunami kids" The New Indian Express 14 Dec 2006

"Painting the children of lesser God" The Hindu 12 Nov 2007

"Childhood imageries on canvas" The New Indian Express 15 Nov 2007

"Brush with reality" Deccan Herald 16 Nov 2007

"Art from the heart" Times of India 27 Jul 2008

"In touch with children" The Hindu 5 Aug 2008

"Colours of childhood" The New Indian Express 12 Nov 2008

"Play of colours" The Hindu 13 Nov 2008

"Reflections of childhood" Kerala Calling Mar 2009

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Don't Scratch My Face!
C. D. Jain - A Provoked Artist and a Child

HE was a rag picker. Silently he went about his pernicious word. I saw him. I wanted to etch him in the canvas of my reflection. As I went over the routine of shaping his little face, he bent over and with restiveness told me Don't Scratch My Face! As Jain speaks of his experiences with these broken children, it is difficult for him to hide the intensity of his involvement with the children who have shaped his life and paintings.

There are these little faces, parched hands, broken and bent bodies and above all else a shattered soul that you see when you walk the corridors of life as lived by the children in a poverty situation. Their faces scratched with stories of lived lugubrious melancholy, their hands a tale of hardship, their bodies are expressions of neglect and my child's soul is a reflection of innocence that she would have loved to delve in. She plays in levity of the world around her; she basks in her simple joys, ruminates in the rural elements of freedom and weather and shares her secret place in unspoken language. Lo. Jain presents his works - Joy, Innocence, Pain and Abuse... in a child's world.

Having spent his childhood in a coastal village of South India, C. D. Jain has since 1988 been using his time and energy to help marginalized children overcome their distress and melancholies of their every day living by helping them to realize their self and expressive capabilities through therapeutic art workshops and the invaluable time he spends with these marginalized children. He is an artist and an ardent child educator who has proposed it that he would live his life to add meaning to the lives of deprived children. Jain as a person believes in the infinitive possibilities of art to transform society. His intimate rapport with children gives his work an unusual depth which is his expressions of the time that he spends with the marginalized children and these have an authenticity that is all its own. Jain tries to evince the reality in which the vulnerable child lives through sententious expressions of hue... appalling and obsequious images of abuse, and besotted lechery still forlorn in the nincompoops callous reality and perception trying to tickle the irascible sensitivity of the system and add meaning to the disconcerted eternity in which this child will live. But he has seen the other side as well and he tries to captivate the ebullience that radiates from the jaunty frivolity of innocence and vivacity in resplendent colours. Here his myriad colours revel in pugnacious nihilism of the reality seen in the child's world today. These are not for cursory glance. Jain's works are aphoristic of his self and he believes in living his life through the reflection of his works.

His works...
Though the strong and benign presence of nature can be felt, the focus is on the "existential agony of children" so to speak. His works depict with great insight and intuition the utter helplessness of the child condemned to hard work and sexual abuse against the back drop of culpable callousness of those in power. If his works with charcoal and mixed media conjure up the agony and anguish of children with an astounding intensity of emotion, his oils, acrylic and mixed media works that delve the joyous expressions of children couldn't miss the sheer joy of a child's life in the innocence of its world. One with its lyrical quality takes us into a world were we will be forced to go back to our bygone esoteric experiences and the other with the dreamlike quality of visuals and colours brings out the poet in Jain. He is an ardent believer in colours and he is a master in using it intelligently. His chromatic compositions are second to none. This unique quality of Jain's works, gives the beholder an experience which remains as an unforgettable visual imprint on his mind.