My colour palette has never changed: Thota Vaikuntam

Over 200 works of artist Thota Vaikuntam have been painstakingly selected by curator Manvinder Davar at an exhibition titled Bhaavanaatharangam A Retrospective at Jehangir Art Gallery. Often reffered to as the ‘man of vibrant spaces, Vaikuntam’s beautiful imagery consists of rustic Telangana women. The ordinary attire of the rural people, their jewellery and everyday life becomes the visual vocabulary for the artist. The current exhibition spans four decades of Vaikuntam’s works. Excerpts from a conversation with the artist:

In many of your interviews, you have said that you have been greatly inspired by your mother. Can you tell us in what ways did she inspire you, as a person and as an artist?
I was most influenced by my mother because she was very work-oriented. She was very hard working and she would never waste time or any second of the day. When she used to finish one work, she would move on to the next. When I used to wake up, I would see her working. When I would go to bed, she would be working. I don’t know if and when she slept. I liked her habits and I wanted to be like her. I tried to be hard working like her. I guess this is where I got my work ethics from, as children learn from observation and that starts at home. If I start working on something, I forget everything else till my work is complete and this holds true in my art as well.

One of the most striking qualities of your works are the colours. Is there a reason you like working with primary colours?

I have taken everything from the village. I have taken the subjects and the colours they wear. They wear Indian colours like brown and yellow ochre. The hearts of villagers are very clear. They don’t play games and very open to everything. That’s why they adopt direct colours and that’s where I have taken those colours from. They are my inspiration, motivation and cultivation as well.

What do you think have been some of the biggest changes and growth in these four decades in your works?

Right from the start, I knew that I had to do something different from others. I had to find my own language. That’s why you will find that in the last four decades, specially in the last three, that I have been developing it stage by stage. If you see my work from beginning to end, you can see the changes. All the artists change the pattern of the art and change the colours. My entire career span, I have struggled – before and now as well. I want to add new things to my art. I don’t know whether I am successful or not, but there is a change.

When did you realise that your calling lay in your roots?

When I went to Baroda, Manida (K G Subramaniyum - his senior teacher at Baroda) told me that you have your own take on things. If you want to find yourself, then you have to struggle. When I asked him I should go about that, he said I can’t teach you that but I can tell you what you have to do. He said you have to struggle and I have struggled for it. When I came back,  I realised that the village is my subject and it’s my everything. There is music, there is art, there are so many colours. I decided that I must bring this culture to the people and to the world. It is slowly growing now. I am trying to represent them through my work, saying this was my land.  That’s why my colour palette has never changed, because their sense of dressing remained the same but their ideologies grew.

You worked briefly as an art director for films. Tell us a bit about that.

I worked as an art director for a non-commercial movie. I thought to myself, I can learn so much and enjoy the process and I did learn many things during my stint. I understood the whole culture of the village and that is when I took everything very carefully to represent the culture and the film. I think I did some good work and people liked it. All I know is that I got a lot of happiness from doing the movie. Every medium is different and cinema is a medium which is constantly evolving. There are new things to learn everyday, which I find exciting as an artist and also liberating. Painting, sculpting, drawing, sketching, colouring - every form has its charm and in the same way, in cinema, there are so many facets that make the movie what it is meant to be.

The exhibition is on till November 21 at Jehangir Art Gallery.