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.