Face from Rajasthan 26

"In the tribal villages and Baneshwar, I found an ideal world that satisfied all my aesthetic needs. Unlike the Gaudia Lohars whom I could only observe from the distance without any direct encounter, the little Bhil villages gave the prodigal son who had left Kerala a second homecoming. These marvellous, graceful and simple tribals accepted me as one of their own and I could observe and study them from close quarters. I put all my creative energy into understanding their life and environment and in that process I found an island away from the turmoil of urban life where I could shelter like a child playing under the cot. They were for me, a means to discover a world of my own, with a separate reality. No wonder those who were familiar with the political and social content of my earlier works found it hard to accept my new paintings with strange looking female figures with impossible waist lines against strange looking landscape of trees, plants, flowers, birds, animals and insects" (Artist statement, R. Sivakumar, A. Ramachandran, A Retrospective, vol. II, New Delhi, 2003, p. 271).