PANJIM: Have you feasted your eyes upon an F N Souza original? Possibly not, for his works in Goa are rare. Well, if you haven’t seen his works, you now have the next best thing, as soon you will be able to see his grandson in action.

If in the coming days and weeks, you spy a young man spray painting on a wall in Panjim or elsewhere, do not stop or disturb him, for it will most likely be Solomon Souza, spraying on to the wall the face of a famous Goan. Stop instead for a moment and watch the artist at work. You may not get this opportunity again.

Solomon will be painting portraits of Goans – past and present – who have been and are heroes. One of the faces he will be painting will, naturally, be that of his grandfather. “We need to bring the heroes of this place to life. I did a similar project in Jerusalem. It was stories of those less told, not celebrities and such, but real cultural heroes. We would like to do something similar here.”

The artist Solomon is not known in Goa. He is young, just 25, but is already highly acclaimed as a muralist and painter in Israel, where he has transformed Jerusalem’s Mahane Yehuda market into an art gallery of sorts with his street art, and he is in Goa to do a little of the same as part of the Mundo Goa project for Serendipity 2019.

The final list of portraits is not finalised. “We discussed a few characters, we will be going over them and have a plan of action,” says Solomon, but is certain that what made him accept the commission is ‘the family factor, because of my lineage to this land, to this space’.

There is no doubt that the grandfather’s talent has passed on to the grandson, but it didn’t skip a generation, as the iconic Goan painter’s daughter – Keren – is herself an acclaimed artist. “I grew up surrounded by my grandfather’s works, but that didn’t guarantee that I would be an artist myself. My mother (Keren) is still an artist now, she paints everyday, and I grew up seeing her, and it was stamped on me, that I need to paint. I didn’t grow up seeing my grandfather paint,” Solomon says.

Recalling an episode with his grandfather, Solomon said, “As a young child we went to a show, very successful, and then he took us to a restaurant and I remember when eating a snail, I couldn’t do it, so he took it, cracked it and gave it to me.”

Just hours after landing in Goa, Solomon the artist who ‘tastes, eats’ with his eyes described the land of his grandfather’s birth as ‘amazing, rich, tasty, spicy, flavoursome, so colourful’.

And while Goa has only basked in the glory that on its land was born India’s most important artist of the 20th century, the Indian Picasso – Francis Newton Souza – it now has the opportunity to see his grandson Solomon Souza paint in person.