CHENNAI: Ever since the age of ten, AV Ilango, renowned artist, has been chalking out scenes of the countryside from his village Gobichettipalayam in Tamil Nadu. Taking this a step further, the Forum Art Galleria in Adyar hosted an exhibition of his artwork, titled Reflections — a collation of his fondest childhood memories, a curation from his collections between 2008 and 2020.
Curated by Shalini Biswajit, the exhibit displayed a variety of sketches and paintings of village life. Ilango particularly captures movements in his art. Two dancers in sync, bulls grazing and Lord Shiva in various forms are some of Ilango’s muses that appear repeatedly in his collections. Festive scenes painted vibrantly with bright colours show two drummers lost in the rhythm.
“I started drawing on a slate with a piece of chalk. I would sit in the fields and chalk out the bulls grazing there,” says Ilango whose charcoal sketches of bulls capture the absolute bliss and carelessness of the animal as it happily feeds on mulch and grass. “I would call the bull my spirit animal. If I were an animal, I would be a bull,” he adds.
Always particular about space, line and form, all of Ilango’s paintings exhibited reflect the balanced use of space, defined figures depicted using singular strokes of the brush and the attention given to placing each element at the right place on the canvas. He has played with his style of painting by highlighting certain parts of the canvas using prints by paint-dipped bubble wrap. “The difference between a saint and an artist is that a saint will attain enlightenment and give up everything, while an artist attains enlightenment and indulges himself in the truth,” Ilango says. At the gallery, surrounded by his work, you get — at least a little — this truth; isn’t that something?
Bull as the spirit animal
Ilango’s charcoal sketches of bulls capture the absolute bliss and carelessness of the animal as it happily feeds on mulch and grass. “I would call the bull my spirit animal,” he adds.