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Photo:Priyadershini S.

In tune with nature K.P. Thomas with his works

No longer can the viewer sit on the fence on issues like global warming, man’s assault on Nature (Back to Nativity series) and atrocities on women (Manorama, Manipur, 2004).

Thomas expresses strongly and speaks in even stronger terms. A poem by him, in the brochure, does the plain speaking. From our reduced world of PCs and laptops one cannot avoid the responsibility of a world that’s hurtling towards disaster, he feels.

For him the imminent flood waters will cover us if mankind does not take heed and stop the destruction of Nature.

“The artist, says Thomas, is Noah and the world, Noah’s ark.” His anger stems from the fact that his paradise (Manandavady) has been turned into a hell by infiltrators. He pays tribute to the campaign led by tribal activist C.K. Janu,(Relevance of Huts) “incidents that academic historians will conveniently forget. That’s the gap that artists have always filled,” he says cynically about blacking out of the inconvenient truth.

“These works are not for interior decoration. They will disturb. You will be forced to rethink about your way of life. My art should go to a person who loves it,” says the artist nonchalantly, not in the rat race for recognition and reward.

In an art world that’s vying for attention, going to ridiculous heights of experimentation and commercialisation, Thomas is content and comfortable in his being. “Kanhai Kunnhiraman is my teacher, though he has not taught me art but I live by his principles. He told me to be conscious only about the work and nothing else. Marketing is the principle of everything in the 21st Century and achievement is always in the mind,” he says philosophically.

And Thomas is at peace with his work but not with society which is his fodder. His verse spells doomsday as he writes, “I witness only an everlasting sunset,” and waits for the impending final flood.

The work where a gaping black hole will finally consume civilisation has drama laced with fear, all in thick stokes of hot, fiery colours.

So is there no hope, through this dark predicament that will befall? “The only way out is a return to basics, back to primitive life, back to Nativity,” depicted in the Back to Nativity series. “I am against all organised religion,” he says strongly and harks back to the strength in Nature. Night boat, a work about life’s journey, in deep shades of blue, is his very private perspective. The boat of life moors the beyond and the behind, a journey to eternity.

With intense themes to deal with, Thomas also experiments with media and paper. Trash paper is important to him used cleverly as background, so old envelops with addresses, computer printouts with graphics all add to the movement of the art. They abet the cause expressed pictorially.

And every figure, every symbol, tree or sun; wave or drop harks back to the clean, quiet bucolic life of his village. Especially little Lisabeth whose tomb has left an everlasting impression on his mind (Gori, the graveyard). “It is a very English graveyard, even the Poplars there were imported by the British. There was a tomb of a little girl Lisabeth and I would go there often as a boy. The tomb says, Princess Lisabeth, you will never die,”

And so on his chest X ray negative he creates Lisabeth with his lungs as her wings to fly…

That Thomas is imaginative is to say the least but his imagination takes wings with colours and words.

Moly in the courtroom is a strong indictment on the injustice of the system of justice. He is almost vitriolic in his work on the Manipur Manorama episode. And so each work says something intensely.

Amidst this are two works, Whence there was God, the title from a tribal song, ‘surya phagam unda naliley’, where a tribal girl looking at the sun, with roosters in the backdrop, like “Kunti looking towards the sun.”

Do you know, he tells you, the tribals have no script, no name to their language but have 13 different languages which are the primeval form of Malayalam. Thomas’ crusade is primarily for those unheard tribal voices.

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