What Anu Kalikkal’s paintings have is an intrinsic childlike quality. Something even the world’s most renowned artist, Picasso, didn’t have. He once said, “It took me four years to paint like Raphael, but a lifetime to paint like a child.” While Picasso with his perfect replicas of Raphael and Leonardo Da Vinci was named a child prodigy, young Anu’s strokes worried and confused the onlookers. “What exactly is she doing?” they asked one another shaking their heads in disapproval. Today, while Anu is conducting her first exhibition of paintings at the Leaf art gallery, those who criticised her are all in support.
In about 50 handmade papers, Anu traces her sporadic memories with watercolour pens and splashes vivid acrylic colours donating them a character. While the textured handmade papers that come in rich emeralds and vermilions in themselves are stunning, it is those designs she fashioned on them that makes them exceptional. Anu’s oeuvres are visual renditions of her poetry. Hence, beneath every work, she has written pertinent poems that lead you to a fantastical world, where she spends all her creative energy.
In one such work she paints the celebration of life in its fullness against the backdrop of a warm orange-yellow gradient. However, the caption reads otherwise, “My neighbour was shot dead today, but that’s okay, I am still alive.” The melancholic undertone of the painting may never unfurl before the onlooker, until he read the caption. The least caring nature of human beings is well captured here.
Anu’s works remind us of Paul Klee for its simple yet intense quality. None of her works are planned with a subject in her mind; instead they reach their final destinations in the process. Anu’s papers thrive with myriad vignettes handpicked from her life’s experiences. None of the works concentrate on a single theme instead they divulge more and more depending on her mood.
Underneath a bright work she has written, “I am the creator, the orator, the eager audience and the funeral pyre in which my stories are burned alive.” The church, mosque, and Ganesha stand tall on a vermillion hand-made paper where guns, bombs and a dagger lie on one side signifying India. Wearing the masquerade of a joker smiles a trickster, who later finds his place behind bars. Anu’s works stand out for its apt metaphors and relevant subjects. From the spellbinding flora and fauna she enjoyed during her college days to the tragic memories of her late brother, Anu’s works are strictly personal. There are also attempts to bring her comical side on paper like the one where she says, “You are fat, take a run, so I did , Just for fun”. The exhibition is on till November 20.
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