Fine arts is a beautiful but difficult field, says Kattakuri Ravi
HYDERABAD: Women and animals dominate the canvases at Kattakuri Ravi’s latest exhibition at the State Art Gallery, Madhapur, their presence rendered in brushwork and colours so precise they appear almost printed. He has heard the doubt often enough.
“People ask me if it’s marker or spray. They cannot believe this much detail is handmade. But I sit eight hours a day, for 15 to 20 days, with just a point brush. Every line you see is by my hand,” he said.
His art has always been about women — not as background figures but as central subjects. “In my paintings, women represent nature and nature represents women, co-existing in both strength and vulnerability. Society tends to disregard them both, but they hold immense power. These female figures appear alongside flowers and tigers. They wear their traditional attire, yet they are raw, real, organic. They are central figures but never objects,” he said.
The bright palette he is known for traces back to a suggestion from his teacher, artist and principal Jogin Chaudhury, during his MFA years at Visva-Bharati University, Shantiniketan.
It was Chaudhury who advised him to take inspiration from Madhubani art in Bihar, noting his natural inclination towards colour. “After I saw Madhubani books in the Kala Bhavan library, these bright colours became an integral part of my work. Those colours are not polite. They insist on being seen. I want my work to stop people in their tracks,” he said.
Over the years, his palette has absorbed traces of Kalamkari, Japanese scroll painting, Bengali features, Patachitra motifs, and even moments caught in dance clubs abroad. “Everything I encounter — whether an old form, a face, or a gesture — can live on canvas. Painting is a way of collecting the world,” he said.
Ravi has worked for more than 25 years without taking up an institutional job, following Chaudhury’s advice to remain independent. “He suggested, don’t take a job. Do only freelancing and you will grow as an artist,” Ravi recalled, adding, “If you want to remain an artist, you must stay free. And I paint only so that I can paint again.”
Since then, he has exhibited in Greece, Switzerland, South Korea, Malaysia, Japan, Bangladesh, and China, along with 30 solo and 56 group shows in India.
He does not measure his career by awards or numbers; for him, recognition itself is the reward. “Fine arts is a beautiful but difficult field. You must struggle, but if you persist for 25 years, the work begins to speak for you. Today, when people in India and abroad know my name, that is enough. That is what I wanted. I wanted to be remembered through art,” he said.
