THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: As you enter the Vyloppilli Samskrithi Bhavan’s gallery, a wide variety of colours welcomes you. From a portrait of a furry dog, a homeless man alone with his thoughts to paintings of birds and fishes, a multitude of themes adorn the walls.
And the artist behind is fifteen-year-old Gowri Nair, a Thiruvananthapuram native who is now settled in the US. The art gallery is the venue of her debut painting exhibition titled, Strokes & Strikes. The 10th-grade student from North Carolina has played with a variety of mediums such as charcoal, pencil, collages, and acrylic.
The canvases, more than 30 of them, flaunt Gowri’s artistic affair since the age of 11. Her parents were surprised at a self-portrait she drew at the age of five. And there started her art-learning journey.
Gowri’s works narrate her art journeys and experiments while learning from various teachers, including veteran artists Raveendran Puthoor and George Fernandez.
And her works here are all untitled. “I wanted the spectators to weave their own perspective, especially for the contemporary paintings which I am pursuing at present. Also, I feel delighted to take time and converse with the viewers who ask doubts about my paintings,” she smiles.
The furry dog is painted using a shading or hatching method. The microscopic image of a chameleon’s head, painted with attention to minuscule details, a collage frame featuring the fall season, realistic sketches of human fingers, and the skull of a bird are some of her realistic paintings.
“More than following a specific style, I am more into exploring every method to understand different layers of the medium. This also helps curate works in a mixed medium too. That said, the chameleon head was an outcome of the acrylic pouring method which creates abstract effects,” says Gowri, who wants to be an artist.
The abstract pieces are a portrayal of her transformation as an artist, she says. One such painting is about the Covid pandemic. One could interpret the base of the painting — as blue depicting the pandemic blues and the dash of black and red the deadly virus. Gowri is open to this interpretation.
“The beauty of contemporary works is that apart from pouring out our thoughts, we get new meanings from the viewers,” she says.
Stokes & Strikes will conclude today