Artist makes huge grass painting of NCP chief Sharad Pawar

Pune, Dec 16: A huge grass painting of NCP chief Sharad Pawar using seeds has come up at a farmland in Osmanabad district of Maharashtra. The artwork was made on an area of approximately 1.8 lakh square feet spread over 4.5 acres of a farmland near Nipani in Kalam tehsil of the district in Marathwada region.

This is not the first time that the artist Mangesh Nipanikar has carved out such an enormous grass painting using seeds.

Earlier this year, he had paid tributes to Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj with a similar piece of art. "It took me 15 days to make the crop art. The total 600 kgs seeds of wheat, horse gram, jowar, fenugreek, and garden cress were used to make the grass painting. While some seeds were sown before making the painting some seeds were sown after sketching," Nipanikar said on Sunday.

The artist said he decided to make the grass painting using the seeds to greet Pawar on his 79th birthday on December 12. "I thought there would not be any other apt birthday greeting from a farmer's son than making a crop art using seeds and farmland to a towering personality like Pawar saheb who had served as Union Agriculture Minister," he said.

Nipanikar claimed his was the biggest grass painting of any political leader so far. "I am thinking of applying to the Guinness Book of World Records," he said. Supriya Sule, MP from Baramati in Pune district and daughter of Pawar, posted the aerial pictures of the grass painting on a social media platform, and praised the artist for innovate use of different crops.