Born in 1965, Roy Mathew Thottam has an educational concotion of being graduation in economics , post graduations in folk lore (MA in Folklore, M S University, Thirunelveli) and Fine Arts (MA in Fine Art- Painting, Canterbury Christ Church University, UK). Some of his important painting exhibitions are:
2003- German Lutheran Church, Delhi,
2008- Sydney Cooper Art Gallery, Canterbury, UK
2008- St. Katharine Hospital art Gallery, Unna, Germany
2010- Church Art galleries in Munich, Gottingen, Frankfurt , Aachen in Germany
2008 - Canterbury Art Fair 2008, England (group show)
2009- Green Orange Art Gallery, Kochi
2012- Embassy of Hungry, New Delhi (group show of Art i)
2011- Kerala Lalitha Kala Academy , Trissur (group show of Art i)
2014 – ‘The Quest’, painting exhibition, Durbar art Gallery, Kochi
He has conducted many art workshops and art appreciation courses. He wrote many columns and articles on art in various periodicals and publications and is editor for a literary and cultural magazine- 'Ezhuthu’. He has also written 'A study on Kerala church murals', and contributed articles on Kerala Church mural tradition in national and international publications.
Artist's Statement - Artistic Process
‘Art is not about art’ said British artist Cecil Collins. Art is about everything and about nothing. It is there in our life in both ordinary and extraordinary realms.
I am interested in the psychic and spiritual process involved in creative activity. There is an urge in everybody to get in touch with our real ‘self’ and to give expression to it. For me it is a journey towards the ultimate freedom of the ‘Self’ which I consider as a spiritual process. Spiritual is that impulse within us to transcend ourselves and our experiences; and an urge to go beyond the obvious to the ‘true and pure’. Art itself is a process of going beyond.
‘The vocation of the artist is to create vision and the purpose of vision is to awaken man’s real self, for in art there is a hidden inviolate instinct for freedom, for eternity’ (Cecil Collins).
Now a day the modern world has made us too false to ourselves. The individual has lost identity in the post modern society and is faced with inner chaos and vacuum. It is the challenge of modern man to search true self in between these realities; as Donald Kuspit says,‘ to make art is to be caught in a trap- in a vicious closed circle of creative birth and death- the rebirth of authentic selfhood and the living death of self falsification’ (Kuspit, Signs of Psyche in Modern adn Post Modern Art, 1993, p. 178).
Artist’s inner world of feelings and emotions, at times conflicting and complementary, become more important than any subject. Art transforms crisis into creative freedom, it becomes a life giving force. It is a process of liberating our Self from the social disguises and pretensions, revealing it in all its expressive nakedness. Expressions with certain madness reveal the primitive depth of the psyche.
- Roy M.Thottam SJ
2003- German Lutheran Church, Delhi,
2008- Sydney Cooper Art Gallery, Canterbury, UK
2008- St. Katharine Hospital art Gallery, Unna, Germany
2010- Church Art galleries in Munich, Gottingen, Frankfurt , Aachen in Germany
2008 - Canterbury Art Fair 2008, England (group show)
2009- Green Orange Art Gallery, Kochi
2012- Embassy of Hungry, New Delhi (group show of Art i)
2011- Kerala Lalitha Kala Academy , Trissur (group show of Art i)
2014 – ‘The Quest’, painting exhibition, Durbar art Gallery, Kochi
He has conducted many art workshops and art appreciation courses. He wrote many columns and articles on art in various periodicals and publications and is editor for a literary and cultural magazine- 'Ezhuthu’. He has also written 'A study on Kerala church murals', and contributed articles on Kerala Church mural tradition in national and international publications.
Artist's Statement - Artistic Process
‘Art is not about art’ said British artist Cecil Collins. Art is about everything and about nothing. It is there in our life in both ordinary and extraordinary realms.
I am interested in the psychic and spiritual process involved in creative activity. There is an urge in everybody to get in touch with our real ‘self’ and to give expression to it. For me it is a journey towards the ultimate freedom of the ‘Self’ which I consider as a spiritual process. Spiritual is that impulse within us to transcend ourselves and our experiences; and an urge to go beyond the obvious to the ‘true and pure’. Art itself is a process of going beyond.
‘The vocation of the artist is to create vision and the purpose of vision is to awaken man’s real self, for in art there is a hidden inviolate instinct for freedom, for eternity’ (Cecil Collins).
Now a day the modern world has made us too false to ourselves. The individual has lost identity in the post modern society and is faced with inner chaos and vacuum. It is the challenge of modern man to search true self in between these realities; as Donald Kuspit says,‘ to make art is to be caught in a trap- in a vicious closed circle of creative birth and death- the rebirth of authentic selfhood and the living death of self falsification’ (Kuspit, Signs of Psyche in Modern adn Post Modern Art, 1993, p. 178).
Artist’s inner world of feelings and emotions, at times conflicting and complementary, become more important than any subject. Art transforms crisis into creative freedom, it becomes a life giving force. It is a process of liberating our Self from the social disguises and pretensions, revealing it in all its expressive nakedness. Expressions with certain madness reveal the primitive depth of the psyche.
- Roy M.Thottam SJ
Great spiritual themes such as
ReplyDeletemeditation, wonder and churning.
You have huge potential as a creative artist.