KOCHI: “I had two choices. Either to be a musician or a painter. I had studied classical music but I found it to be limiting. Now people are breaking through and adapting elements in music. But, that’s not my case. I don’t use European elements or Post-Modernism. I wanted a personal expression which is extremely difficult in music and possible in art,” says A Ramachandran.
The artist and Padma Bhushan awardee was speaking to Express on the event of his 27-day exhibition, ‘The Mahatma and the Lotus Pond’, hosted by the Kerala Lalithakala Akademi at the Durbar Hall. The exhibition which started on Sunday will continue till October 31.
The event, coinciding with the 150th birth anniversary of Gandhi, is being organised by Delhi’s Vadehra Art Gallery (VAG) and curated by art scholar R Siva Kumar.
The exhibition, as evident, features two subjects, a sociopolitical icon and a cultural symbol.
“The paintings are not thematic. The sketches and sculptures of Gandhiji were completed a few years ago and the lotus works were done recently. But of late, Gandhiji is very much spoken-about. Hence, the relevance,” says the artist. The exhibition comprises 91 works, eight oil paintings, 56 water-colour paintings, 25 sketches and two sculptures.
While the oil and watercolour paintings delve on lotus ponds, Ramchandran’s sketches focus on various features of Gandhi, such as his head, face, legs and limbs, in isolation.
Gandhi’s persona, which captured the artist’s mind as a child, continued to leave a lasting impact as it grew into curiosity about his message.
“In Shantiniketan, my teachers would ask me to study villages for my work. When I left for Delhi, I wasn’t able to, so I would go to Udaipur in Rajasthan. Initially, I wasn’t sure about what I would get. Gradually, upon observing their rituals and lives I realised that human beings and nature has an extraordinary tie-up which has been forgotten about.
We have the wrong notion that we are the masters of the universe and we continue to destroy everything. Fifty years ago when I left Kerala, there were paddy fields and streams which are reservoirs of rainwater.
Today, there’s nothing. Water has no place to go, so a flood occurs,” he says, on the correlation between his work and reality.
“There is a limit for a human to destroy nature for his comfort. He is not the sole one who has the right to enjoy nature. This is where Gandhiji’s relevance comes. As per him, India lives in her villages, wherein people are self-content. They lived without disturbing nature,” he said. One could say that a lotus pond could be associated with the artist. A recurring subject in his work, Ramachandran was enticed by a lotus pond close to his house in Kerala during his childhood.
The pond made a reappearance when he began to visit villages in Udaipur. The realisation that the lotus ponds were a complete ecosystem made him capture their forms vividly, each different from the other. The relationship between the lotuses is various other forces of nature have been presented on a large, expansive scale. This reminds one that nature is indeed connected to everything.