Murali Nagapuzha
ABOUT MY WORKS
About my work
The familiar language of painting has landscape as a back ground for some context in the theme. Landscape is fragmented nature articulated compositionally to enhance the meaning of the context, or to contextualize an episode or even to give an atmosphere of scenic beauty. Nature as such has only a secondary existence in all such works from Renaissance period onwards or even in the miniatures. In India nature is more a motif than just a back ground in the painting and in the modern period it is almost like a referral point.
The greenery of the land, a sign of fertility is a generalized concept about nature. However each place has its own green/flora specificity. Even when nature is depicted the flora represented in the paintings is more connected with the ideologically acclaimed landscape with flowers like lotus and water lilies, trees such as mango trees or some other aristocratic ones.
In my paintings the locally specific flora and fauna almost envelops the whole canvas sometimes even eclipsing human presence. Only the tribals are projected as equal to nature, but in all other contexts nature is embraced wholeheartedly .Some of my works are leafy plant paintings with all the non aristocratic grass and papaya like plants.
Usually I use monochrome green to show the ethno-botanical nature of my native Kerala, so called God’s own country.
The green splendor of nature depicted is not just a landscape; it is the essence of the earth, the material plane of nature, children, butterflies, the very essence of Nature Being, an expression of green aesthetics.
Murali Nagapuzha
