Art from God's own country

Hindustan Times

18-05-2025

Kerala is evoked by the catchy line, God's own country. Its waters are stirred by the ripples of crescent-moon like boats. Its emerald-green trees host an astonishing variety of birds flitting like ethereal spirits in the foliage. These scenes are best captured by a sensitive artist whose life and soul is intertwined with nature.
A painting of happy birds on a robust jackfruit tree mesmerised the eye at the ongoing exhibition, Art through Print and Paint --- An exploration of how artists engage with materials and how textures, layers, and processes shape meaning. The exhibition is curated by the AIM Gallery and can be viewed at the Government Museum and Art Gallery till May 21, 2025. To commemorate 'International Museums Day (May 18)', the AIM Gallery exhibition also features signed prints of works by artists of such repute as MF Husain and Manu Parekh.
Artist Roy K John resides in the pastoral village of Cherumkuzhy in Kerala's Western Ghats, a world-renowned site that showcases incredible India's biodiversity richness. John's village has the nearby reservoirs of Peechi and Chimmini that support a wealth of faunal life due to their perennial waters. They are somewhat similar to the check-dams that breathe life 365 x 24 into the Shivalik foothills that straddle the tricity's horizon.
John lives in a veritable cradle of nature. He steals out of his home with his sketch book to spend hours in the forests and by the side of the reservoirs where he observes nature's infinite plays and variations to seek original ideas for his artworks. John then returns to his studio to translate his sketches procured from Aladdin's cave of emerald riches. He fills out his ideas on canvas with a deft use of brush and a striking employment of colour. Kerala life breathes in a stillness far away in a Chandigarh exhibition hall.
'I have done a series of artworks that dwell on birds and the jackfruit tree. Not only am I capturing the green symbolism of Kerala through such artworks but I convey my concern over the threats to nature. We must realise that nature is preserved through sacrifices and making tireless efforts,' John told this writer.
Soil nourished by soldiers' toil
As a patriotic poet may put it, flowers are able to bloom in desolate battlefields of Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) only because the blood and toil of our soldiers nourishes the soil.
For those soldiering in the barren heights of Kargil-Ladakh sectors where not a tree is to be seen in the alpine screes, it is small flowering shrubs that emerge from cracks in the rocks to form miniature gardens. Flowers are the aesthetics that temper the blood and gore of Infantry life, the proverbial petals that block the outlet of rifle barrels. These flowers of 17,000 ft are symbols of 'life and resilience in the barren Kargil mountains', as an Infantry Major expressed it.
In the forested reaches of J&K, where coniferous ridges, bubbling brooks and alpine flowers adorn the meadows, flowers are a brief and beautiful rest for soldiers undertaking the feet-blistering grind of forward-domination patrols to guard against infiltrators and psychopath killer terrorists holed up in caves.
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