OIL CHANGE – Switching occupations from waiter/cook to driver to painter

The last few years in Lalith Kumar Kharka’s life were all about switching jobs. From a waiter/cook to driver - but that was until he discovered his talents.

Today, at 28, Lalith Kumar is, what he describes as, an emerging representative realistic painter. Placing himself in a corner of the high-end Uma resort and working on his paintings, dark and standing 5.9 ft, Lalith Kumar has become the centre of attraction to tourists working as a contract painter for the resort. “I had a passion for painting since I joined the art club in my school,” said Lalith, without losing his concentration from the incomplete painting of a monk. Lalith has finished 15 oil paintings since he left driving.

The recently married painter quit school in 2001 after his parents couldn’t afford higher studies for him. “I had to find a job to fund my sister’s education,” he said.

He was recruited in the food and beverage department at the Aman resort in 2003 and worked for about a year and, later, for a year and a half in the same department at Zhiwaling hotel in Paro.

But it was the “beautiful people and scenes,” that captured Lalith’s imagination, when he was ferrying passengers across Bhutan as a taxi driver. “I took hundreds of pictures and used them as themes of my paintings,” said Lalith.

Fate brought Lalith in contact with a foreigner, Hans J Keller, whom he calls his mentor. Hans Keller, who employed Lalith as a driver, encouraged him to quit driving and concentrate on painting. “It changed my life,” said Lalith, whose first painting, a monk, was sold for US$ 1,000. Today, his paintings are sold from anywhere between Nu 50,000 to Nu 135,000.

“At the moment, the photos are taken from books and photographs, but I’m gaining confidence and have started to do paintings from my imagination.”

“The boy has good potential,” said his mentor, Hans J Keller. “We’ll take his paintings to showcase Bhutan in Vienna and also at the Rubin Museum of Art in New York after he makes a good collection.”

Source: Kuenselonline