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Friday, July 18, 2025

Af­ter death of dad...

Ariella channels grief to artwork

by

Radhica De Silva
1473 days ago
20210705

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

 

Twelve-year-old Ariel­la Roop­nar­ine went through the most unimag­in­able pain when she sud­den­ly lost her fa­ther, Dr Richard Roop­nar­ine, three years ago af­ter he had a failed sur­gi­cal op­er­a­tion.

How­ev­er, as she deals with the tor­ment of los­ing her dad, the for­mer stu­dent of Sevil­la Pri­vate Pri­ma­ry School is chan­nelling her grief to cre­ate ex­tra­or­di­nary art­work, some of which is now be­ing sold abroad.

Al­ready hav­ing won sev­er­al com­pe­ti­tions, in­clud­ing the top prize from the T&T Nat­u­ral­ist Club when she was just sev­en, Roop­nar­ine is well on her way to star­dom, as she teach­es her­self new art tech­niques us­ing a range of medi­ums and Youtube videos.

In an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia, Roop­nar­ine shared sev­er­al of her mas­ter­pieces at her Cou­va home. One of them was a sil­hou­ette paint­ing of her fa­ther and her­self walk­ing amidst the beau­ty of the galaxy.

“This is me and my dad. The galaxy is such a beau­ti­ful place and this is where I think he is,” she whis­pered.

Al­though she dreams of be­com­ing a med­ical doc­tor just like her fa­ther, Roop­nar­ine says she will not give up her pas­sion for art. 

“I love art be­cause it re­lax­es me and helps me to ex­press how I feel at the mo­ment,” she said qui­et­ly as she sketched flow­ers on a vase speed­i­ly with­in min­utes.

Cur­rent­ly, her pas­sion is pot­tery de­sign and the young artist said it is grat­i­fy­ing to cre­ate pic­tures from her mind.

“There are so many de­signs I can do on this pot. I see what I want to do and then when I do it, it would look re­al­ly nice,” she said.

Be­ing a deep thinker and emo­tion­al­ly sen­si­tive to oth­ers, Roop­nar­ine prefers to spend her time sketch­ing, paint­ing and de­sign­ing.

Some­times she draws hap­py pic­tures of her two sis­ters. Oth­er times, her art­work is som­bre and ab­stract.

Hav­ing writ­ten the Sec­ondary En­trance As­sess­ment ex­am­i­na­tions a few days ago, Roop­nar­ine hopes to pass for her first-choice school—Na­pari­ma Girls’ High School.

Her moth­er Sari­ta Chankadyal said Roop­nar­ine’s art­work is a gift.

“She has been draw­ing since she was four years old. I know that art helped her cope be­cause in­stead of hav­ing to talk about how she felt all the time, you can feel her mood in her paint­ings.”

She added, “I have a friend who is al­so an artist and he can in­ter­pret what she is try­ing to say with her art­work. He tells me that he feels the pain in her pieces and some­times she feels a mood of peace in her cre­ations.”

 Sari­ta said get­ting her daugh­ter art sup­plies was chal­leng­ing dur­ing COVID.

“With the clo­sure of art shops, we have not been able to buy our art sup­plies like we nor­mal­ly do so I have start­ed or­der­ing on Ama­zon and us­ing a sky­box to ship it,” she said.

Sari­ta be­lieves oth­ers can use art and writ­ing to deal with the pain of grief.

“It’s been a rough time for all of us, very hard but I am so grate­ful that Ariel­la has found some­thing that takes her pain and ex­press­es it in­to an ac­tu­al medi­um,” she said hug­ging her daugh­ter.

And al­though life may give chil­dren hard knocks, Sari­ta had these words of ad­vice for oth­ers fac­ing sim­i­lar pain. 

“For all those who are out there feel­ing this and suf­fer­ing this many fam­i­lies have lost loved ones due to COVID my ad­vice is to get a jour­nal and start writ­ing and af­ter writ­ing an en­try over and over, you will see how far you’ve come,” she said.

A client from Scot­land who saw Sari­ta’s pieces of Face­book have ex­pressed an in­ter­est in pur­chas­ing.

Sari­ta said an­oth­er friend from the Unit­ed States has al­so ex­pressed an in­ter­est in pur­chas­ing some of her art­work. Sari­ta said Roop­nar­ine can cre­ate pic­tures in just a few hours and can look at any­thing on tele­vi­sion and recre­ate it on pa­per.

Any­one in­ter­est­ed in see­ing Roop­nar­ine’s work can email her moth­er at sarichankadyal@live.com.


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