Artist Rajasekharan's painting brush swayed between the finer emotions of human mind. It captured the realistic expressive face of a lady in 19 paintings. Titled 'Navarasas', the works in oil paint were awarded a record in the Unique World Records and Assist World Record for portraying the expressions on a single face using oil paint in minimal time.
He took 10 to 12 hours to complete each painting between 2010 December and 2011 June.
Once he started, Rajasekharan says, his passion for painting drove him to make more than one image of a single person. Deviating from the general trend of choosing young demure beauties as models, Rajasekharan picked a retired army officer as his subject. “I was not choosy in selecting models. She did not have any inhibitions. That was the only reason for preferring her. We took her stills initially and then made slight changes to the looks to suit the paintings,” he says.
Of the paintings, Rajasekharan contributed the work titled ‘Bhayanakam' to Thane Relief fund for cyclone victims. After exhibiting the work at Chennai Lalit Kala Academy, it was sold off for Rs 25,000.
Rajasekharan has worked as an art director in Adoor Gopalakrishnan's documentaries and also in his movies ‘Nizhalkuthu', ‘Naalu Pennungal'
and ‘Oru Pennum Randaanum'. He bagged the state award for best art director in 2007 for ‘Naalu Pennungal'. In 2010, he did art direction for the Tamil movie ‘Magizhchi' .
He has also signed up to work for another feature film that is slated to begin in September this year. He has to his credit a Guinness record for creating the largest easel painting in the world in 2008, which was also added to the Limca Book of World Records in 2010. Hailing from Kaliyikkavila in Kanyakumari district, the 48 year old is looking forward to get his ‘Navarasas' too included in Guinness and Limca world records.