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Nature’s tears, for all to see

Photo: S. Ramesh Kurup

POWERFUL STROKES: K.T. Mathai with his paintings exhibited at the Lalithakala Akademi Art Gallery in Kozhikode. —

Without indulging in jaded sloganeering, the strong narrative of K.T. Mathai’s paintings exhibited at the Lalithakala Akademi Art Gallery here invites the viewers to certain pressing geopolitical issues of our time.

If it’s the application of strong colours that initially attracts the viewers to his paintings, the elaborate narratives of life with all its modern-day maladies gradually sustain their interest on each frame.

Myriad images of exploitation of land, drinking water scarcity and callous assaults against nature are featured in the show, christened ‘Climacterics,’ which means a period in life that constitute a crisis and a general decline in fertility.

One canvas has a panoramic view of a village where the verdant hills have been bulldozed, paddy fields filled with mud and water bodies polluted, even as the villagers go about their life narcotised by the over-familiarity of the tragic events around. Images related depletion of drinking water and the resultant commercialisation of drinking water is a recurring concern in ‘Climacterics.’

His works, mostly in acrylic and watercolour, never venture to sermonise. But they, powerfully and artistically, reflect on the “wounds human beings heartlessly inflict on the earth.” “I am only trying to give an eyewitness account of what I see in the immediate surroundings using the medium I am most comfortable with,” says Mathai, who hails from Pangarappilly in Kochi. The helplessness of humans trapped between global corporates and local exploiters is well represented in his paintings.

The different postures of a rooster at the backyard of a village house, vigilantly cocking its head at the sound of an earth-moving machine at a distance, brilliantly portray the air of the menace the callous exploitation of nature by humans.

The narrative skills of the artist have left a strong imprint on each of his paintings. The common pattern used to detail the farmlands in the frames, with strong colours, give them a prized visual richness.

The show will end on April 17.

Jabir Mushthari

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