India, June 14 -- The journey of the colour blue in art across the world is fascinating, as it has remained one of the most coveted colours, giving art the rare qualities of calm, hope and celebration for thousands of years. This is because the amazing shade that spreads across the sky is rarely found in nature and is difficult to transfer onto canvas. It is easy enough to sing - Aa neele gagan tale, pyar hum karein (Sharing love beneath the blue sky) - but far more difficult to bring it onto the canvas, as in the works of Vincent van Gogh celebrating the apple blossoms or Pablo Picasso's blue period, marked by blue and blue-green tones following the suicide of a close friend. The history of this canvas shade is long and interesting. It was the invention of Egyptians and the first synthetic pigment that ornamented statues, graves and porcelain or the robes of Mother Mary down the Mediterranean. The outcome was that grinding the stone Lapis Lazuli, imported from Afghanistan, brought in the renaissance, the intellectual and aesthetic movement in Europe from the 14th to 17th century. After this excursion from Afghanistan to Europe, one comes to the safe, small and not so old city of Chandigarh with its youthful experiences with the new world artists and its College of Arts which became the refuge of people seeking to tell their stories in colour, form and the art. There was Shiv Singh (sculptor), Prem Singh, the painter of veiled women and children blowing toy trumpets at the gates of Chandigarh homes, Malkit Singh, painter of fields of the Punjabi soil, Diwan Manna with his street photography, Madan Lal with his bright city hues, Jaskanwaljit Kaur with her prints and paintings just to name a few. And of course 1970 saw the addition of Raj Kumar, who painted the city in blues. Academics were not the interest of the artist as a young man but he liked to dabble in colours and lines. His moment of joy came when his artwork made it to a competition along with that of his art master. The decisive moment came when he got the first prize and and his teacher the second. His father decided that his future lay in the arts and he was admitted to the Chandigarh College of Art. The hiccups of early youth vanished and the journey of a painter had begun. The painter tells a sweet and amusing story when he came to collect the admission form at the College of Art: "Not knowing the right gate to the college, I walked into the adjoining design centre which had a statue of a woman with freshly washed hair. With the lighting a bit awry, I thought her to be a real lady and quietly retreated thinking that I will come back for the admission after this beautiful lady had left!" One of the greatest assets of this artist was that he chose to adopt this young city of ours and not negate it, as many did in the words and motifs of Le Corbusier's planned Chandigarh. His emotive strength in turning life's experiences into motifs was visible in his early works like 'Mum, I Don't Like War', following the 1971 war, and 'My Father is Somewhere Here', painted when his father passed away in an accident. After completing his college years, he got a job as a textbook illustrator in Punjab education department's Sector 17 office. The job brought him a close friendship with Punjabi's pro-people yet feisty writer, Mohan Bhandari. He remained in the close company of writers. Afternoons would see them in the coffee houses-there were two back then-discussing art and literature, while evenings were spent walking down the coveted sector with its elaborate showrooms and vendors squatting in the open selling their wares. These roadside salesmen were to find place on his canvases as also the hustle-bustle of downtown Chandigarh. "I joined the College of Art in 1978 but got to meet him for the first time in 1980, through his remarkble series on footpath merchants selling dark glasses, fish swiming in glass bowls and of course the famous work 'Dreams of a Baloon Seller' in which the merchant flies on his own baloons," says his close friend and younger painter, Raj Kishore Gupta. He adds that he sought out the painter in his studio apartment in Sector 15. This apartment was to become a salon of sorts for writers like Bhandari, Lali, the savant, the great connoisseur of arts, where this scribbler too found her way as the only woman. There were nights spent awake talking, eating food fetched from the dhaba, and listening to Lali hold forth on everyone from painter Vincent van Gogh to dancer Sitara Devi, while we listened awake until the wee hours. Such were the 80s and 90s in a room full of dreams. Such was the environment in which this rare painter kept painting his masterpieces, often alone, listening to golden-era Hindi film songs. He always painted at his own pace, in competition only with his own brush. He continues to do so now, living in his own large home on the outskirts of the city, often choosing to work on his terrace, still producing an annual masterpiece to display. Photographer Kuldeep Soni says, "I owe a lot to Raj Kumar for guiding me into the world of photography. My greatest joy in recent years was when my photograph and his painting were part of the same show." Now, last but not least, one question for the coveted painter: why this fascination with the colour blue? "I am comfortable with blue. Even when I am painting in green, I add some blue to it," he says. To this, one can only add that blue is universally associated with reliability, calmness and intellect. Little wonder, then, that it is the colour of the sky above us!...