A little boy lies down on a boat that is cruising downstream along a scenic route, amid lotus leaves. He is falling in love with solitude, his eyes closed. In another frame, a little child sits on a jackfruit tree with his friend. They are conspiring to pluck a jackfruit! Almost every one of Bipin’s frames has the innocence and curiosity of childhood attached to it.
“Sometimes, the boy in the pictures is me,” says Bipin. The boy on the boat, a painting titled Rest in Peace came to the artist when remembered the many lake rides he did back in Kerala during his younger days. “Even now there is a small ‘kadavu’ near my home. There is also a temple near my village that you can only get to on a boat. I was reminiscing all this over a call with friends. But ironically, I have never been alone on a boat before,” he quips.
There is a reason why jackfruits are a favourite for him. “Every vacation, we’d have jackfruits in Karunagappally. My cousin and I would climb up the trees for them. Sometimes the family would relish the ripe fruit or we would make dishes with it,” says Bipin.
Though an engineer by profession, Bipin is deeply in love with the art world. “Though I used to paint since I was a kid, it was at college I started immersing myself in the world of colours. At the Government Engineering College Idukki, I met students from all over Kerala. There, I learned about digital paintings,” he says. It is also where he heard about Theyyam which appears in many of his surreal works.
Elephants, evenings spent playing in water, watching his mother bathing a baby, the days spent obsessed in front of TV watching Shakthiman, Bipin’s oeuvre is a nostalgic walk down the memory lane.
Though the 27-year-old has been creating digital paintings since 2015, he started publishing them on his Instagram only in 2020. Now his account is completely dedicated to art, which has stories about his childhood and adulthood now. Life Tea, one of Bipin’s works, is a tribute to his love for the hot beverage.
“Everyday, my friend and I drink at least 10 glasses of black tea from a shop near our office. One before going to work, several during the work hours, one after work, then several before we sleep. Life is nothing without tea,” gushes Bipin.
What sets his artworks apart, however, is the style. In a largely white background with minimum strokes, Bipin speaks volumes. One of Bipin’s signatures is two little birds that accompany the little kid on his every adventure. “Those birds represent my twin siblings. They are younger than me and used to follow me around all the time,” says Bipin.
New series
Bipin is now working on a new series. “I paint women from all walks of life in the series. Their skin is dark like a rainy cloud. That’s why I named it Nimbus Clouds,” he says. The latest one in this series is Karuthamma, a character from the novel Chemmeen.