Vivid depictions of life

HE CAN'T hear, he can't speak, so what? He can see and observe. G. Prabhakar who obtained a first class Diploma in Applied Arts and Painting in 1961 from the College of Arts & Crafts, Chennai, began his career with H.S. Benson Advertising, Chennai.

He watched and observed the people around him. With a Max Beckman Memorial Award for outstanding performance he went to the U.S.A., where he graduated from the Brooklyn Museum Art School, New York, in 1967.

In all these years Prabhakar never gave up oil painting depicting scenes from life around him, particularly of the middle class people and their simple pleasures.

Men and women chatting in groups, children playing on broken down cars, women doing household work, tending to animals etc., are scenes which come with ease and with perception in his paintings. With strong lines he delineates human forms, trees and architecture, filling in colours with quick strokes rather than in smooth layers. Door frames and furniture offer the geometrical foil to the human forms. He has not allowed his stay abroad to interfere with the Indianness of his themes or their handling.

He has also taught himself cartooning and caricaturing and has won prizes. Prabhakar had displayed some of his paintings recently at the Lalit Kala Akademi.

Realistic idiom

G. Manohar is quite at home both in water colours and oil painting. He is fond of painting flowers and landscapes.

Flowers in cheerful bunches in both the media attract attention, though they are more suitable for greeting cards.His landscapes in water colour show rural scenes in a typical technique of the medium. Landscapes in oils also picture rural scenes, wooded areas etc., some of them in a very realistic idiom. But the surprise at his exhibition at the Vinyasa Art Gallery till September 30, 11 a.m. - 7 p.m., is the abstract work based on Nature.

Some of these are quite interesting with quick strokes of impasto in vibrant hues. Some of the landscapes (though one can recognise the various elements), border on the abstract because of the way in which they are treated, and these are the most appealing features of the show.

LAKSHMI VENKATARAMAN

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