Most people know him as the French Jat. With his piercing blue eyes that matches his blue turban strikes a note of familiarity as he keeps hitting the newspaper headlines, sometimes as a ‘once-upon-a-Frenchman-and-now-turned-a-devout-Sikh’ or as a pioneer organic farmer in the region whose Angrez ka farm is a must visit site near Anandpur Sahib. But there is much more to him apart from his fluent, accent-free Punjabi and knowledge about the Guru Granth Sahib and Punjabi culture. And one of them, as we recently discovered, is his command over ink drawing.

Darshan Singh takes inspiration from nature. His shading technique and interplay between light and shade imparts depth and a sense of colour even when the medium is only monochrome, often blue or black.

Darshan Singh’s drawing forced us to make a comparison with the most prominent artist in this genre — Prabal Pramanik. But then, we find differences more than similarities in their style of execution. Unlike Pramanik, the famous paper cutting artist, whose drawing were his pictorial diary of the place called Bhamlada, Darshan’s collection is mainly culled from his own imagination. So, a few remind one of terrace cultivation of Assam or the dense tropical forests of the state, others take you to the picturesque Himachal, some time just landscapes and sometimes with a beautiful face dominating the scene.

Dharshan’s signature style comes from detailing, his lines are sure and strong, shading perfect, giving the end product the feel of a miniature painting.

In fact his fascination for detailing is what drew him towards the medium. “With ink one gets down to the minutest of form, which is not possible in other medium. And he paints directly with his pen, no outlining before the actual execution.

His transformation from an aspiring farmer to an artist to both is an interesting one. “I never attended an art school, though my father wanted me to be an artist. I wanted to be a farmer,” says Darshan who spent his early life in France, before he moved around and finally adopted India as his homeland. Well, the dormant artist in him blossomed when he landed himself in Taiwan in 1995 and took training in Chinese calligraphy. This skill of his comes forth in almost all drawings, sometimes in form of poems and sometimes in the form of sayings from Gurbani. Both form of art has now become stress-buster for Darshan and also a means to fill up the lonely hours when he is at his farm. And his frames, with the soothing effect, beat the stress for an onlooker too.

parbina@tribunemail.com