“They’ve been obsessing me for years. I searched and found them in Benares, on the banks of the river Gange (India). They arrive here to get rid of everything and to wait for death. This existence can last for years, sometimes decades, almost a life. Opposite to mine, well organised and filled as a human life can be, to try in vain to push the limits of its end”. – Denis Rouvre. (Photo by Denis Rouvre)

I would like to tell you why many artists, who like me, have painted portraits and landscapes in oils on canvas, worked with acrylics, watercolors, and pen and ink drawings, have turned to the art of gourd carving.

Khan, a five-year-old male White Bengal tiger, looks on inside an open-air cage at the Royev Ruchey zoo in Krasnoyarsk, Russia, October 21, 2016. (Photo by Ilya Naymushin/Reuters)

A child stands inside a large soap bubble made by a street artist at the Mayor square in central Madrid, Friday, December 9, 2016. (Photo by Francisco Seco/AP Photo)

A dog stands next to the body of an elderly woman killed inside a house in Bucha, outskirts of Kyiv, Ukraine, Tuesday, April 5, 2022. (Photo by Felipe Dana/AP Photo)

Festival-goers take photo inside of Spectra, a seven-story spiral walkway up to a viewing deck, at the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival in Indio, California, on April 17, 2022. (Photo by Valerie Macon/AFP Photo)

A child poses for a photo inside a life-sized doll box after watching the “Barbie” film at the SM North Edsa in Quezon City on July 19, 2023. (Photo by Jam Sta Rosa/AFP Photo)

A child sleeps inside a makeshift hammock made of a saree which is a tradition Indian costume worn by women, along a road in New Delhi on August 19, 2021. (Photo by Sajjad Hussain/AFP Photo)