An artist fascinated by forms, colours, and textures

Exhibition of paintings by V. Ramankutty, titled ‘Imagined Forms’, now on at Alliance Francaise de Trivandrum

Artist V. Ramankutty with his paintings at an exhibition under way in Thiruvananthapuram.

Forms, solid and fluid, seem to be the constant in the paintings of V. Ramankutty that are on display at the Alliance Francaise de Trivandrum here.

V. Ramankutty, a researcher and teacher at the Achutha Menon Centre for Health Science Studies here, is fascinated by forms — how they keep changing, how many forms that have been around for years and years can no longer be seen, and how new forms evolve. These are among the questions that he tries to explore in his paintings at the exhibition titled ‘Imagined Forms’.

The use of colours is integral to how he perceives the changing forms. Earth hues — brown and rust — and bright colours lend the forms structure.

‘No hidden meanings’

“My paintings are visual. I play around a lot with colours. But there are no hidden meanings in it. It is all an arrangement of colours and forms.”

In fact, Mr. Ramankutty begins by deciding which colour he wants to use and builds it up and sees where it takes him. It may take three or four sittings to finish a work, and he reviews them at each stage.

The 22 paintings, in acrylic, have mostly been done in the past two or three years though there are some that are from earlier.

Only a couple of paintings have names — one is called ‘The loom of time’ and the other is ‘Muthum Pavizhavum’.

‘The loom of time’ is a nod to an English translation of a Kalidasa work. “I do not really like to name the paintings. When this was done, my daughter said it resembled a loom, and somewhere I had seen the title of the book and it came back to me,” he says. It was much the same for ‘Muthum pavizhavum’ too. When the painting was done, it was the name that came to him.

Texture also interests him, and he uses tools to achieve the kind of effect he wants.

One painting in the current collection, for instance, has been scored using a discarded credit card before the paint dried.

Though he has not had any formal training in art, Ramankutty has been painting from early childhood and has read a lot on art and painters, especially of the 20th century, and techniques. He has done portraits and landscapes but forms are what fascinate him.

“It will also be dishonest for me to do landscapes as I am not an outdoor person. I will have to depend on something for cues. Mine is a cerebral existence.”

He does cartoons too. “I used to do political cartoons for Deepika when young. Now I put my cartoons on Facebook and plan to hold an exhibition when I finish 100 of them.”

Today, he even uses an app to to make cartoons. “I do not have to draw physically. There is a lot of experimentation involved and find it very interesting.”

Though time is always a constraint, this is his fourth exhibition in the city. He has exhibited in Kochi and taken part in group exhibition in Mumbai. ‘Imagined Forms’ will be on till Saturday.