SaiKiran DhanalaKota

The DhanalaKota family is the last practicing family for Cheriyal Scroll art, and the 25 year old artist SaiKiran, shoulders the big responsibility of carrying...  Read More

The DhanalaKota family is the last practicing family for Cheriyal Scroll art, and the 25 year old artist SaiKiran, shoulders the big responsibility of carrying forward this legacy. A 160 year old Cheriyal scroll painted by his great great grandfather is also exhibited in a museum in Paris. With the demand for Cheriyal scrolls reducing, his parents told him to study and not pursue art, but SaiKiran pursued a degree in fine arts to learn new art techniques to contemporarise the art and make it relevant in today's times. He wishes the Cheriyal scroll artists knew more about the stories they are painting too, since the storytellers for these paintings are independent and add their own colour to the stories, but he makes an effort to learn these stories and his own favorite story is that of Gaurapuranama, about Toddy Tappers (Wine tappers). Such wise words from such a young one ' We change our phones every year, our phone covers every 2 months, change is such a constant, so our art has to keep up with this change and evolve too'  Show Less