Artist Chandranandan left the security of his job at Kerala Agricultural University, Vellayani, to pursue his passion – painting. And the result is a poignant collection, aptly titled ‘Blaring in the Wind.'
Chandranandan depicts nature in a novel manner. In his painting ‘The Changing Season,' a drummer playing a rhythm in the backdrop of torrential wind captures the beauty of the seasons and their magnificence. The chenda (drum) reappears in ‘Rain,' where the rhythm of rain and the resonance of thunder are shown through the drumming of a chenda.
Social themes
Most of the paintings at the exhibition have an underlying social theme. The setting for the paintings is Annapara, a fictional village somewhere in Kerala. In ‘Celebrations,' people are engrossed in playing a medieval game where each one trips over another. The winner is the last to fall.
‘Boomerang,' depicts the age old-theory that every action has an equal and opposite reaction. One of the most evocative paintings in the collection is titled ‘Miracles.' Here a deer is shown inside a lion, mirroring a recent Animal Planet documentary that traced the story of a deer abandoned by its mother and raised by a lioness.
‘Miracles' depicts the lioness and the deer amidst a number of mothers, signifying the universality of motherhood.
‘Why was the Hunting Dog let loose in the Grassland' shows the progress of mankind and the demarcation of boundaries preventing the sharing of earth's abundant resources.
The creation of man-made boundaries such as caste and creed is evident in ‘What did the Elephant do Wrong,' where an elephant symbolises religion. The elephant carries a group of people on its back, but as one among the group falls to his death, the elephant is blamed, similar to the manner in which religion is often picturised as the root of many wrongs.
According to Chandranandan, his paintings capture images lost in time with the floral landscape showing the beauty of the world at its inception and the other paintings showing the fading of this beauty with the advent of man.
