Bent over an intricate pencil sketch of a mural, George Fernandez is lost in his work in the sunny verandah of his house on a bustling road at Ottukuzhy in Thiruvananthapuram.
Inside Flora, his art gallery and home, the popular art instructor and artist has displayed 40 art works, ranging from postcard-sized ones to those about the size of an A4 sheet of paper.
Raw, his 26th art exhibition, is an ode to nature as all the art works are made from natural materials made by the artist himself. Many of the art works feature flowers, birds and insects painted on handmade paper.
The natural colours have been made from herbs, vegetables, flowers and leaves mixed with the sap or gum extracted from certain trees and plants.
“The recycled paper was made by newspaper and the pulp of peels of banana, mango, orange and beetroot and leaves. Before painting on the paper, I gave each a wash of diluted cowdung solution to prevent the paper from being eaten by insects,” explains the soft-spoken artist. He has also used wood, jute cloth, and spathes of the areca palm as canvas.
Each colour used in the exhibition has a story behind it. “The red has been extracted from the evergreen Bixa orellana plant, the yellow comes from turmeric and the brown from a rock that has been powdered. I mix it with Arabic gum or pine sap to make the colours. The blue is from a stone that is used in murals. But it is difficult to come by now,” he says.
Lime gives the white and charcoal has been used to obtain black.
A hornbill in all its splendour views spectators from its perch while an owl, painted on a sheath of arecanut, is an attractive melange of browns.
An naughty moth rests on paper that looks like the insect had eaten some of it. So does a ladybug on a leaf that it is feeding on.
He has also skilfully used pyrography to depict birds and portraits. “Pyrography is the art of decorating wood with burn marks, which is made by applying a heated needle to make the art work,” he says.
Also on display are the gum and extracts from plants that he has used to bind the colours.
The exhibition concludes on August 20.
