Shortly after finishing studies, he went to a sleep. A long sleep that lasted 20 years. In coma stage, in sick bed, at home.  Getting cured, just as if waking up from a night’s sleep, he went to continue his higher studies.

This is the life of Vincent, artist hailing from Kanjiramkulam, Thiruvananthapuram.

He did his BFA in Painting from College of Fine Arts Tvpm, in 1988. Months later he was afflicted with a deadly disease, which laid him on bed for years. There were times, when even doctors doubted he could come back to life. But he did. In 2020 he got completely cured. And, the first thing he did was joining the College of Fine Arts, to do his MFA in Painting.

He began to paint relentlessly. It was an overwhelming urge to scribble, in unpremeditated strokes, the creative overdrive lurking in his thoughts. To me, they appear like revelations of the subconscious.

His paintings are symptomatic of his distress. To recognize the underlying psychological cross-currents of fear and despair in his works, we must need to know about his life, which has gone through intense anguish.

Yet, for him, art is not a solace. Neither is it a detachment, nor an escape from the haunting reality. It is a powerful counteraction. The extremities of figments that he conjures up on his canvas are, at times, shots across the bow. They startle us at moments. They are replete with fire, guns, bones, and along with them, distorted human figures. One of his works depicts trees growing from skulls.

There are art critics and curators who have related his works to expressionism and other schools of art. He denies it. He has developed a visual imagery for himself, he says, to render his concepts. The prevalent chaos and dread angst, not as a beholder, but a victim.

In Kerala, for the general public, art still remain stagnant, confined in the gilded framework of romantic concepts. ( I borrow the word ‘gilded’ from Mark Twain, who coined the term “The gilded age”, to define the 19^th century. The age ruled by anarchy, covered with a glittering, but deceiving, layer of virtuosity. ). Alluring landscapes, portrayals of flowers and gaily birds still adorn the walls. And, the artists who are into these stuff stay on top, accepted, gets awarded, as well as praised. In such an art scenario, artists like Vincent are marginalized.

There are no flamboyant figures, and embellishing colors in the works of Vincent. There is a profusion of black and other dark pigments in his works.  He steps out of the cocoon of the learnt-and-taught, unveiling the thin layer of beauty in fine arts, to reveal the suffocating grandiosity behind it.    

He questions the false concepts of duties, rights, culture, virtues, wisdom, sanity, sanctity, and all that is doctrinal or political. But, talking with him and knowing about his life, I have come to the conclusion that, more than questioning and opposing, his art reveals the meaninglessness of these concepts. And, this apathy, from the existentialist perspective, is what makes this artist and his art unique. It is his forte.

 Vladimir and Estragon were, at least, waiting for Godot, though they knew it is in vain. Vincent does not even wait for anything or anyone. What he see in front of him is mass destruction of the world. Red light, fire, and ashes in his painting depicts this. From the ashes a new world may emerge, he accepts. But, it will be a new world with new weapons and new war, he says. 

“What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow

Out of this stony rubbish? Son of man,

You cannot say, or guess, for you know only

A heap of broken images  . . . Only

There is shadow under this red rock,

Come in under the shadow of this red rock,

I will show you fear in a handful of dust.”-

T.S. Elot, “The wasteland”

It’s these words I see in the art of Vincent.

  Ranju leaf