Dotted with difficulties, artist Eby N Joseph’s life could be an inspiration for others in more ways than one. The painter battled and survived a deadly form of cancer and bounced back to lead a normal life, displaying incredible willpower along the way.
Today, Eby finds solace in nature. His paintings can be likened to looking out of a window. He captures the green, blue and yellow hues of nature beautifully. “I draw inspiration from the landscapes and landmarks that I have seen,” he says. “While travelling, I look out for a scene that inspires me. When I see a landscape, I do a pencil sketch of it and translate it on the canvas.”
It was to showcase Kerala’s striking landscape, colourful history and vibrant culture that Eby launched the Kerala Darsanam, a painting marathon. His goal was to create as many as 1,000 paintings reflecting interesting aspects of Kerala. “It took me four painful days to complete my first painting after being diagnosed with Multiple Myeloma,” says the artist, who used to complete a painting in an hour during his pre-cancer days. His philosophical journey throughout the state displays his play with light, leaves, and sea.
Now, he has embarked on his mega project, Bharata Darsanam, through which the artist intends to depict the social, cultural and geographical diversity of India. He has already done 25 acrylic paintings on Kerala and Gujarat. There are scenes from the streets of Porbandar, the birthplace of Mahatma Gandhi, and a work in which the Father of the Nation confesses his wrongdoings to his father. These works are different from the ones you normally see in Eby’s repertoire. “It was a cons cious effort to walk away from the cliched portraits of Gandhiji,” says Eby.
Eby has another face as well —that of a humanitarian. He has launched a foundation called Art Can Care, through which he plans to take care of cancer patients. The money he gets by selling his works will be channelised to Art Can Care.
As an artist, Eby is influenced by the Impressionist masters. This has, in turn, helped him to add a new perspective to the landscape, lifting it from the monotony of being simply the reproduction of nature. His chosen medium is acrylic on canvas, although he started off with oil paintings.
A content artist today, Eby won the Outstanding Young Indian Award given by the Indian Junior Chamber of Commerce in 2001, the Sankara Menon Endowment Gold Medal from Kerala Lalithakala Akademi in 2004, the Kerala Market Achievement Award in 2007 and the C P Raman Nair Award in 2010.