New Delhi, May 24 (IANS): Big-ticket artists get their fair share of praise, but an ongoing exhibition here is proof enough that Indian art students are no less creative.

The 17th Collage Annual Art Carnival, open for public viewing at the Lalit Kala Akademi gallery here till May 27, is showcasing works by 150 students of the private art institute, Delhi Collage of Art.

The 400 artworks include watercolours, charcoal, oil and acrylic paintings, mix-media works, and even a few installations.

Apart from young artists, the exhibition features older students, who returned to the classroom to pursue their artistic dreams. Amita Mehta, 54, was a former mathematics teacher who decided to pursue art as a hobby when she was above 50.

Exhibiting her abstract canvases here, Mehta told IANS that most artists don't create for the commercial market, but to let out their own creative expressions.

Another artist-student, Anju Agarwal, who quit her job as an art teacher to rejoin academics, shared that art is mostly taught as "copywork" in schools.

"When you teach an entire class to make a tree with rectangles and circles, it's not an outlet to their creativity. After teaching the basic techniques about how to use a brush, how to sketch etc, they should be let free," Agarwal, 50, said.

Also interesting to see in the exhibition is the students experimenting with famous paintings like Mona Lisa (Leonardo da Vinci), The Scream (Edvard Munch), Girl With a Pearl Earring (Johannes Vermeer), and The Persistence of Memory (Salvador Dali).