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Soothing hues Paintings that evoke one’s emotions

“Her restless fingers tearing dry grass to bits and pieces as if there is nothing else to do, still haunt me. It is Kamala’s narration of her tale of sorrows without a pang that compelled me to do her portrait”, says the artist.

Kamala’s spirit spills over to her sisters in the show. The woman in Ponmani’s show is part of nature, a fleeting glimpse of Mother Earth. Or, else she is trapped within the confines of walls.

Look here, ‘The Bleeding Heart’. Behind the lonely girl, who stands near the plant called bleeding heart, so common in convents, is a partly curtained window. Unknown and unseen to her lay a panorama of green and blue.

‘Curtain and Cranes’, is another illustration of the same plight. Here the woman is absent. But you almost catch her shadow looking out from this curtained room. The plants and birds and distant horizon stretch beyond her reach. On this vista spreads joy like sunshine. The contrast is implied. It is a sad commentary on the state of the woman caught within, with political underpinnings.

Here is another picture, of a tree bursting in shades of orange, with a carpet of its flowers around. Children play underneath in splash of blaze. Men, simply, do not inhabit her realm.

Most of her paintings are landscapes, landscapes of soothing hues that make you nostalgic in these days of urbanisation. “Now-a-days I paint only landscapes, I do not know why.”

You stand in front of them with a meditative mood creeping within. Here are landscapes that calm your mind with lyrical charm. The blue colour has an ethereal allure. There is ‘Blue Mango Tree’ and ‘Blue Coconut Tree’. You sense an orchestration of shades of blue in many of her paintings where water is integral. Water bodies reflect and refract layers of reality.

She experiments not just with tones, but also with light and shade. ‘Pappaya’ is beautiful where light and darkness filter. Night and day, rain and shine are part of her landscapes; sun set and sun rise mark their presence.

Most of the paintings are not abstract; nor do they display photographic reality. What has been observed is transmuted in the mind of the artist and the canvas presents the creation of the artist.

Artist Ponmani Thomas

They have a poetic quality with the train and the sea acquiring symbolic significance in her series of landscapes.

“I have come across changing terrains during my journeys,” says the artist. Indeed life itself is a journey full of learning experiences.

‘Colours of Mahe’ captures special tints with rain in the foreground. ‘High Ranges,’ is an abstract that suggests the wildness of the Western Ghat. “Quite often I shuttle from Mahe, where I live, to my husband’s home in Idukki”, explains Ponmani.

Ponmani Thomas is a Keralite. Born and brought up in Kasargod she came under the influence of her mentor, Punchithaya, a well-known colourist, who encouraged her to pursue art. She took her BFA from the University of Mysore in 1992. She has taught painting in the Artist’s Village of Mahe for 12 years. Has taken part in half dozen workshops; conducted a dozen solo and group shows; grew confident…and now resigned her job to work alone from her home in Mahe. Her art, like the artist, is deceptively simple. Ponmani, I felt is ‘Penmani’, a gem of a woman.

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