The man who painted the lilies
S. THEODORE BASKARAN
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O.T. Ravindran was one of the few accomplished plant artists in India.
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Self-taught artist: Ravindran always painted from a live specimen
"O.T. RAVINDRAN might do for the weeds and wild flowers of India what James Audubon did for the birds of America," wrote a reviewer after seeing an exhibition of his paintings at the Carnegie Art Center in Washington in 1984.
OT, to his friends — O for Orchids and T for trees, he would say — had many labels: horticulturist, landscape designer, ecologist, botanist and painter. However, it was as an accomplished plant artist that he was known the world over.
When his four paintings of orchids were brought out as stamps in 1991, philatelists hailed the series and for quite a few years a special album of these stamps was a gift item in our embassies. The Smithsonian Museum in Washington has his paintings as exhibits and Kew Gardens in London has them in its holdings.
Fascinated by plants and trees that surrounded him in his village in Kerala, Ravindran started drawing even as a schoolboy. This interest led him to graduate in Botany in Madras Christian College where he came under the influence of the legendary Dr. Venkatasubban, his professor. A self-taught artist, Ravindran kept up his painting,
Unconventional
He was an unconventional in many ways. He discouraged visitors preferring to be alone. "Lot of people call me a nut case," he once wrote, "since I spend most of my time with plants, especially wild ones." Whenever I wanted to see him I would take my chance and go unannounced. I got to know OT in the 1970s when we served in the WWF committee. His knowledge of plants and trees was phenomenal and he was willing to share it. His dedication to his calling was amazing. He always painted from an in situ live specimen. If he learnt that an orchid was blooming in Yercaud, he would pack his painting kit and be at the railway station in a few hours. He would visit the plant in various seasons and capture its different appearances in one canvas, something you cannot do in a photograph. He set exacting standards for himself. His aim was to be morphologically accurate and at the same time create something elegant to look at. It was a fine balance that he always achieved. The Western Ghats was his favourite haunt. He observed that over the years the floral wealth was dwindling and many plants, such as the fabled Kurinji, were getting rare. OT had sent an outstanding drawing of Kurinji flower to be used in a postage stamp for which he has been campaigning. When the stamp eventually came out, it carried a mug shot of a bunch of Kurinji and not his painting. This saddened him immensely.
Plant artists are rare in India. During the British period, particularly after the founding of the School of Arts and Crafts in Chennai, a few Indian artists were commissioned to paint plants, for the sake of scientific record. Other than this, there was no tradition of botanical art. This may be one reason why OT was noticed more in the West than in India. His work went largely unrecognised here. "My friends in India, worldly as they are, may now have more reason to call me the craziest artist they know. But I revel in the satisfaction that more unusual people have gone before me; such as Thoreau and Johnny Appleseed. The philosophy or nature of those peculiar men may raise criticism but if properly understood, it would make the world a much more clean and beautiful place for all of us to live in"
Fine writer
Though he did not write much, he was a fine writer, as the readers of his occasional columns in The Hindu know. Here is a sample of his style, from a piece he wrote about a cactus. "Plants, especially the natural ones (as opposed to those artificially made) have a vibrancy of their own. They only need our help to bring out the beauty in them. Even the weed growing unnoticed in the thicket is strikingly beautiful. Plant them, sketch them and arrange them and they become pieces of fine art. Art, whatever man may claim it to be, is nothing but his sincere effort to imitate the unattainable perfection that is Nature."
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