Tree in a sunny day

Sometimes when I close my eyes I see a bright red mixed with magenta and Indian yellow forming a beautiful round ball of fire. And then I see it filtering its way through the ripe green leaf colour. 

When this mixture of fire ball passes through the trees so gently and peacefully, it feels so good to be alive. 

I feel like nothing can go wrong.

Nature is a loving mother and a violent enemy at the same time. 

We enjoy the calmness by stretching ourselves long under the shade of a tree on a beautiful calm day. And this same nature can wipe away homes, people and land through her elements of hurricane, tsunami, volcano eruptions or an earth quake.

I guess the uncertainty of mother nature is the same reason why we believe in the certainty of that calmness of a sunny day.

Everyday there is a riot of colours that bounce in front of us. Most of the colours we miss out on because we are too busy.

So next time you see a sunny day, look at the tiny ray of light that has filtered its way through the leaves and other beauties.

Painting Details:

Date of creation :January 2014

Medium - Special Paper

Media - Acrylic done with knife

Size -17 inch (W) x 12 inch (H)

Sale Status : Available

Price : On request

Roses against the blue

This is another painting done as part of a series of knife paintings in January this year (2014).

I like to look at the blue sky. I spent my entire childhood in Dubai where the sun is always up. My school had a huge open playground (maidan). The sun would beat directly  upon us. During those hot days the clear blue sky would seem so endless. I would stretch out my hand as if trying to be ignorant of the truth of how vast and wide the sky truly is. 

Anyone who has stood directly under the sun during the hottest month will know how exactly difficult it is. 

As a child and now as well I like roses of all colours.There were no flowers in the hot vast playground in my school. But there were many roses in the playground of my mind.

I used to see these beautiful red roses as part of that vast, ever demanding, clear blue sky.

A thought of calmness is what settled within me when I had finished this painting. 

Hope you get to feel an emotion you hold close to on calm days as well.

Painting Details:

Date of creation :January 2014

Medium - Special Paper

Media - Acrylic done with knife

Size -17 inch (W) x 12 inch (H)

Sale Status : Available

Price : On request

From within the Storm

The book of Exodus found in the Old Testament of the Bible records the journey made by the Israelite's to the promised land (Canaan).They start the journey under the leadership of Moses. As the people leave the land of Egypt where they were slaves for many years, there comes a point when they are faced with the Red Sea in front of them. They become faint of heart when they begin to think that there is no way to cross the big sea before them. ( this was before the time of bridges etc).

So the people begin to cry out because of their remorse. Moses who hears this loud wailing is broken at heart and speaks to God asking Him to lead them further.

God does answer Moses. 

Moses is asked by God to strike the Red Sea with his walking stick. And the sea divides into two, opening a clear pathway for the Israelite s to walk on foot.

I know this story from a very young age.It has always interested me to see in my colour's eye what a wonderful scene the divided sea would have been. 

While doing my knife painting series, I was tempted to paint out this scene. I chose not to paint the divided sea.Rather I drew the Red Sea at the beginning few seconds when the water was collected and an inner storm blew forth from within showing a violent sea that would soon be tamed.

Painting Details:

Date of creation :January 2014

Medium - Special Paper

Media - Acrylic done with knife

Size -17 inch (W) x 12 inch (H)

Sale Status : Available

Price : On request

Sea boat

When I lived in Chennai I Ioved going to the beach and looking out into the sea. At a far distance the outline of a boat would be seen. I enjoyed these few trips. My memory has few other beaches around the world too. I rememeber the beach at kanyakumari, kovalam, Dubai, kochi, mahabalipuram, florida, the Dead Sea etc.

Every one of them boldly speaks of their own uniquenss.

Some people might joke at you claiming the sea is after all just a body of water and the beach a lump-some amount of sand. This is absolutely wrong! 

I am sure the beach-lovers who are reading this now will totally agree with me that each beach and its sea are lovers of a first kind.

There are no two same sea boats (as per title).

This painting is part of my series of knife paintings. Its a nostalgia of all the beaches I have been to and look forward to go to once again.

Painting Details:

Date of creation :January 2014

Medium - Special Paper

Media - Acrylic done with knife

Size -17 inch (W) x 12 inch (H)

Sale Status : Available

Price : On request

Roses in the Green bush

Roses in the green bush is part of a series of knife painting's done by me during the month of January (2014).

I am often asked if i do an exact duplication of what i see in front of me? My answer is - No.

I paint remembering all the roses I have seen in my entire life up to date. This leaves me with fast, loud and over joyed roses that have popped from within the green bushes of life.

I hope you enjoy this painting as much as I enjoyed seeing it evolve.

Painting Details:

Date of creation :January 2014

Medium - Special Paper

Media - Acrylic done with knife

Size -17 inch (W) x 12 inch (H)

Sale Status : Available

Price : On request

Layered with meaning by NITA SATHYENDRAN, The Hindu Newspaper

Anu Kalikal’s paintings are playful yet thought-provoking

Anu Kalikal observes life around her and then turns these observations completely on their heads into abstract images and thoughts on canvas.

That’s why Anu’s paintings make for an interesting viewing. The exhibition that features more than 30 of the self-taught artist’s works, painted over the past nine years, is titled ‘Stains of freedom’.

At first sight Anu’s paintings look deceptively simple and full of child-like enthusiasm, what with her playful use of hues and doodles in ink. But look closer and it’s clear that each of these paintings have layers of thought in it.

Take, for instance, the painting ‘Celebration in Chaos’. It depicts colourful figures in merry abandon painted against a cheerful yellow background that is marked with random doodles. “It symbolises how life moves on despite the tragedy next door,” she Anu.

Another one appears to be a pale yellow canvas sprayed with blue ink. “It’s titled ‘Stars at Midnight’ and it represents the inky blue star-lit sky as seen from remote Moonamkallu, a village with no electricity, in the hills beyond Seethathode, a town enroute to Sabarimala. My husband, Byju Thomas, was the parish priest in the village for a while. The village had no electricity and the stars were the only way to see at night, hence the yellow background,” she adds.

While ‘Cocoon and Resurrection’ parallels the life of Christ with that of a butterfly, ‘Death, the yellow bird’ is a parody on people who say that they don’t fear death.

Then there is the abstract ‘Education and God’, a sarcastic take on parents applying undue pressure on their children to perform academically and then praying to god to see their dream for their children to fruition.

“Growing up in the Gulf countries, I have seen many parents scraping together their life-savings to make doctors out of the children, even though they know that the child is not capable of following it through. I find it a sadly humorous situation,” says Anu, a literature graduate from Madras Christian College, who is a freelance graphic artist/ ad content writer. The artist says that she has been painting since childhood but stopped for several years following the demise of her brother, Georgie Anil Abraham. “Everywhere I went all these paintings used to travel with me. It was only in the last year that I really picked up the brush and started painting again,” she says.

Under each painting the artist has added a couple of lines of thought, to add layers to the visual experience. “I prefer not to explain my paintings. I want people to come up with their own inferences about them,” she says. Interestingly, Anu has also used different types of paper canvases – there’s even a painting done on moth-eaten paper – again to add depths of meaning to each painting.

The exhibition is on at Leaf Art Gallery, near Vyloppilly Samskriti Bhavan, Nanthancode, 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. It concludes on November 20.

Tracing the innocence By Chencho Sherin Thomas - The New Indian Express

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.