Have you ever been captivated by the beauty of your surroundings? The magic of a fleeting moment - someone leaping into the air with joy, a couple lost in a world of their own or even the simple everyday image of a little girl in her mother’s lap; have you felt the longing to capture it and freeze it in time?
This, apparently, is one of the reasons why Vengatesh chose to be a painter. He recreates on the canvas the poignancy of moments that would otherwise go unnoticed, unaccounted for. His milieu is the village of Seliamedu near Pondicherry, where he has lived all his life and his imagery is drawn from the mundane sights from this mostly uneventful locale. Yet, his canvas erupts with the zest for life and its simple joys that spill over in a riot of colours.
The bold hues, rough imagery and emotional high of his paintings are evocative of the Van Gogh school. And it comes as no surprise that the celebrated post-impressionist painter is Vengatesh’s idol of worship. “I am in awe of Van Gogh. His use of colour and the honesty of his imagery are truly amazing,” he says. An exhibition of his paintings is being held at La Gallery 360 from October 18-31.
Village belles lazing around in a banana plantation, artists performing ‘koothu’ (a folk art of Tamil Nadu), men against the backdrop of vast fields and so on are some of the images that populate his canvas. Goats and other cattle are a recurring presence in his works and appear to command the same importance as humans.
The texture imparted to a painting of Mahavir in acrylic speaks volumes of his talent. The work, inspired by the statue of Lord Mahavir at the Mahabaleshwar Jain temple, depicts the statue against a star-lit sky and at whose feet lies a masked human figure. The embossed finish given to the painting appears so real that you want to touch it to make sure that marble chips are not pasted on to the surface.
“The statue had looked all the more imposing at night. I did a series of paintings based on the visit to the Jain temple. Another painting, which showed Lord Mahavir carrying my seven-year-old son, was sold last year. Here, I have imagined myself as lying at the Lord’s feet and the mask represents the false ego and malice within every human being,” he says.
One of his other favourite themes is Michael Jackson. The singer is depicted in action in some of the works while there are also portraits of a young Jackson, dazed by the glitz of showbiz. In one of the paintings, Jackson is seen along with Buddha and Vengatesh explains that they were similar in that “both sought to find peace of mind”.
Vengatesh has conducted solo exhibitions in Pondicherry and some of his paintings, which were taken to France by an artist friend have been exhibited in a gallery there. One small aspiration he has is to build a house for his wife and son. His small hut, along with a few unfinished works, were blown away when Cyclone Thane hit his village last year.