The truth on the canvas
RANA SIDDIQUI
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Roy Thomas' just concluded exhibition at Arushi Arts was a statement of truth.
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ART FOR A CAUSE Bar girls in Roy Thomas' "Anonymous games" series.
What if artworks, especially those that last almost a lifetime, stop projecting the society they take birth in? The generation that follows would never be able to know what constituted the earlier civilization. Art is the language of the times it is born in. If one has to demolish the history of a place/country, it's the language that he has to destroy first. Author-critic Daniel Barenboim rightly said, `Every great work of art has two faces, one toward its own time and one toward the future, toward eternity'.
These days, many artists, especially among the younger generation, paint abstract with a view to `becoming global' without realising that abstract is what the senior artists say, `a meditative form of art'. It can't be reached unless the art students learn forms, and learn to tell tales on the canvas, or whichever medium they work in. There are artists from many parts of India, who still swear by figurative works. They project realities of the times they live in.
Real life
One such artist is Kerala-born, 42-year-old Roy Thomas, who has several group shows and a few solo shows to his credit. This winner of Junior Fellowship from HRD Ministry, Government of India (1997), he is known for his `real life' projection in his oil on canvas. This time too, he exhibited a body of his works at Arushi Arts titled "Projected Memories... Fading Realities" that narrated the true tales from various parts of the country and abroad. Be it uprooted Mumbai bar girls, sex workers in Germany's five-star hotel where prostitution is declared legal, Tamil Nadu's worst ever water crisis, Army personnel firing at civilians at Srinagar, tribal newborn babies who are come into this world in hostile conditions, or an African cock now on the verge of extinction, and so on. His works despite having dramatic elements and bright colours have some humour to keep the message subtle yet cutting. Most of his works have recurring images of animals, fish and innate objects floating on the canvas to convey the "ease of the medium". Not that all his works are about the troubled, they also delve into the softer lives of the babies, their innocent dreams and their adaptability with their circumstances, and so on.
Says Thomas, an art student of Delhi College of Art, "It pains me to see the distinction between the celebrated and the ignored. I never needed to go beyond the television sets and newspapers at home to come face-to-face with the bitter truth. I try to raise issues through my works. One day when there will be peace everywhere, my works will remind the times through which we got it. I try to keep alive the age I am living in through my works."
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