Vincent Kanjiramkulam’s art speaks to you through its myriad of hues and harsh lines. These paintings are his way of rescuing his creativity and reestablishing his affair with the colours. His latest series, Shocking Memories, shows a world in the grip of a calamity, the subsequent changes and the evolution of humans in dealing with the immense pain and loss of time. Painted in bright hues of red, green, black and yellow-orange, Vincent has curated around 100 paintings that narrate the transition of a man into a beast.
When normal life got disrupted due to the pandemic, the 60-year-old freelance artist dealt a double shock. Vincent was suffering from memory loss till then. He lived unable to remember anything for two decades — a side effect of medical negligence. He had just completed his MFA from the College of Fine Arts, Thiruvananthapuram, in 2019 and was about to reenter the art world.
“I started from where I stopped. In 2016, I joined MFA in my late 50s. It was a struggle as my mind was still young in its 30s. But my body was getting old. In the 70s and 80s, the world lived with reformative thoughts and literary works. But the 21st century scared me with the bloodshed, destruction, murders and violence against women. I found that the world I knew is no more. The much-romanticised man of past has turned into a bloodthirsty beast,” says Vincent. He poured this discovery into his canvas at his Ananthakalakendra art school in Thiruvananthapuram.
His anguish is evident in his artworks, especially in his black and white works. His sorrow and shaky memories make themselves present in these works. His colourful paintings are filled to the brim with details and patterns, rejoicing in the harshness of each stroke.
Vincent was just 37 years old when he was diagnosed with chest pain. He had to undergo several treatments that gradually affected his whole body resulting in a poor digestive system and memory loss. Later, the doctors realised he was suffering from gastritis, not chest pain. “I got back on my feet after a one-year Ayurveda treatment in 2014,” says the artist.
A New World
When Vincent started painting at his art school, he explored the new world in front of him, especially the pandemic and its after-effects. His mediums varied from oil and acrylic to even ink and pen. Vincent played with bright colours where surrealism aids him in understanding the world once again. In his canvas, Covid is a bio war where grenades, shattered dead bodies and crying faces are all portrayed in an abstract style. He explores the ecosystem where nature is constantly facing destruction in pen and ink.
“The pandemic and subsequent lockdowns came when I finished my MFA and decided to visit art galleries in India and abroad. I was confined to my home once again. The news was filled with the after-effects of Covid, the unattended dead bodies, ailing people and the Afghanistan war and I had to explore them in my work. Every painting is untitled as I want my spectators to interpret them. I feel audience interpretations help me grow as an artist,” says Vincent.