An attention to detail seems to be the key word to T.C . Rajan’s exhibition of acrylic paintings at the Museum Auditorium. A collection of 30 paintings and 20 charcoal sketches on homemade paper: each canvas is a work of art, be it the perfect arch of a deer’s back or the ripples that form around an elderly woman who is filling her pot with water.
Roads seem to fascinate this self taught artist who is employed as senior project assistant, VSSC, and several of his frames have viewers wondering at what is around the bend.
If one has a road curving through the high ranges with the trees closely spaced, another pot-holed road, winds through a verdant road. Yet another has bullock carts travelling in a line on a path by night. The path is lit by kerosene lamps hanging from the carts.
ADVERTISEMENT
The sea and its varying moods are captured in soothing hues. If one has the waves playfully lapping at the feet of a group of children at play, another has a young girl staring distantly into the horizon of a calm sea.
A play of shadow and light highlights vacant chairs of a hotel room as light trickles into the room through a window. However, one feels terribly lonesome as one gazes into the particular frame and the sense of loneliness intensifies in another frame that shows an empty boat resting by the silent back waters.
Umbrellas in rainbow colours fill an abstract painting, while a frame which shows a man driving his bullock cart in earnest as if in a race is arresting. One can almost feel the splash of water as the oxen run through the water.
ADVERTISEMENT
Rajan’s charcoal sketches are an ode to the bicycle. Says Rajan: “When I was young, my father would drop me to school on a bicycle. The scenes captured on paper are memories and images I saw while travelling with him.” And so, one sees a man and a young boy on a bicycle, a milkman balancing his milk can on his bicycle, a group of girls teaching their friend to ride a bicycle…
Most of his canvases, he says, are the result of his observations while travelling. “Like that picture of the woman filling her pot with water. That was a scene I saw at Neyyar Dam. The scene of the girl by the beach is one I saw at Varkala. That winding road through verdant greenery leads to Munnar.” And so, in swirls of green, yellow, blue and all the colours in between, his frames transport viewers to some of the places he has visited.
His collection of paintings is on display until December 1. The exhibition is organised by Sparc, a film society.