Canvas of conflicts

Even before he points to the painting of a naked man by the pond, you are struck by the oddness of it. Not because of the nakedness, that’s alright, that’s common. But the naked man is lying on his front on a piece of white cloth, having a sun bath. He looks like he is taken away from a beach and brought to lie by a typically green Kerala pond. The next painting is of a woman painted the same way, only she is not lying down, but facing the pond, a white pad in one hand, as people from the shore across jeer at her. “Contrasts and conflicts, that’s what they are,” whispers Regins P. Thomas, the artist, in his Thrissur dialect. He has brought his new paintings from that series, inspired by the works of English artist David Hockney, added a few old ones too, for an exhibition at the Lalithakala Academy in Thiruvananthapuram.

“David Hockney painted his nude figures by the swimming pool. I put them in the Kerala ponds,” he says. “It is a contrast of Semitic background and Indian culture.” The woman’s painting is what Regins calls Goddess of Impurity. “Such silly talk about women being impure and all,” the soft-spoken artist mumbles. Yet another pond picture shows a splash, it could have been a bird that flew away or a man who dived. That’s also a Hockney technique, Regins says, to capture the moment after action.

Paintings inspired by David Hockney.

The old paintings include ‘Spirit of Darwin’, and ‘Laughing jackfruit’. Darwin because his thought of evolution needs an evolution, Regins thinks. And jackfruits are again a part of his conflicting series, for we have slipped away into foreign cultures and food habits and the ethnic fruit is laughing at us. Suggestive painting at a time the jackfruit is about to be declared the state fruit.

If you go by the order of his display, next is the ‘Crows & Angel’ series and after that the ‘Circus Diary’. Regins tries to explain how angels are about dead people going to heaven, and crows are what people are believed to turn into after death, in our culture. “I have made it a contrast of black and white,” he says. The circus diary has many little props that Regins fears will cease to exist. A striking picture from this series is of two young women in circus clothes, posing, as if they are asked to, Regins brushstrokes adding lines of untold sadness on their face.

Art critic Vijayakumar Menon who inaugurated the exhibition, writes, “The imprints of humanism that are slowly vanishing without being noticed by many in the course of time are depicted.” Regins’s exhibition ends on March 21.