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Strokes that reflect hundred emotions

Photo: S. Ramesh Kurup

COLOURS OF EXPRESSION: C.V. Surendran along with with his ball-pen paintings at the Sterling Art Gallery in Kozhikode. —

A hundred emotions present in the artist’s mind surface in the pen strokes and subtle shadings that mark the works currently on display at the Sterling Art Gallery.

Reflecting joy and pain, loneliness and togetherness, and scores of other feelings, the 35-odd ball-pen drawings by C.V. Surendran will be on view till March 2.

He has not let his physical condition deter him. Surendran, 33, was diagnosed with spinal muscular atrophy at the age of 13. At one stage, doctors gave up all hope, he says. “For a while, I let the incapacity overpower me. But not for long. I took hold of my senses and launched into an activity I had been drawn to, even as a child – drawing. Initially, it took months to complete a simple drawing,” says Surendran, who has to be lifted on to a table so that he can draw.

“I started drawing by copying paintings. Later, I could draw based on my own thoughts and feelings.”

Butterflies, birds, flowers, fruits and all that provide colour and life to the world around abound in the drawings of Surendran, a change from the bleakness depicted in some of his other frames.

A cat and a parrot are friends, a little girl finds a playmate in a puppy, a butterfly hovers round a flower – these are some of his cheerful frames.

Others in the abstract, mirroring glimpses of life and death, pain and sorrow and the artist’s constraints owing to his disorder, mostly in black, leave the viewer thinking.

The piece de resistance is a multicoloured work in violet, black, pink, green and brown that, Surendran says, pictures the feelings and apprehension of a mother, his mother, for instance, confused by the son’s predicament.

Two of the frames seek to depict the fiery power of tears that could be the result of wrongs suffered, Surendran says.

He plans to hold an exhibition outside Kerala, having held five exhibitions at different centres here.

U.A. Khader, novelist, inaugurated the show, which is being held to garner funds for Surendran.

Maleeha Raghaviah

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