Murali Nagapuzha is a self-taught artist who has grown to prominence today with a dedicated love for art and an artistically rich childhood that taught him to paint from the heart.

“The meaning of green for me is fertility, rejuvenation, and growth. I want people to protect the green environment.”

Native to Kerala we can see the artist’s innate love for nature and its subsequent destruction as the subject matters that motivate him today to paint his uniquely green canvases. His use of distinctively misty green shades that cover the canvas broken only by stunningly bright and colourful foliage, flowers, birds and insects is breath-taking. Each painting is like a tribute to the abundance of the environment, it sanctifies the innocence found in the smallest corner of the marsh and the magnificence of the jungle on an equal par. A butterfly is celebrated in one painting as much as the tiger or the goat or the little child in the next. Beauty, he defines as the exalted co-existence of all in a harmonious unison with each other. Workhorse that he is, he has made every inch and every corner of his painting also, work hard to involve the spectator to participate in the recognition of his purpose.

His use of oils to paint layer over layer of colour, raises the paintings to a life of fullness and lush tenacity. Every peaking insect or a peeping child’s smile stirs a river of emotions that reflect through the challenging opaque greenery. The bright colours that pop through the myriad shades of green convince the painting into its reality. His realism draws on surreal emotions that cannot be caged within one style yet is unique enough to validate its exclusivity. A photographic capture of a moment in time, they persuade the observer to imagine the happenings that surround that moment. Simplicity built on intricacy, the contradictions within is exposed in true revelation through the variations of depth and the play of perspective within the same painting. It can also be seen as an influence of Indian miniatures, especially in the native series of the villages.

As an artist after his own mind and heart, his works echo his memories of his plush green village in Kerala, his love for the environment and its restoration. It humbles the mind, fills the heart, exhibits the glory of the green world and aims to awaken the environmentalist within the viewer.

Beneeta Xavier