Tarika Ram Thirukural based abstract Paintings

In 2020, this section had featured a story on a ten year old boy from Thiruvallikeni, Prahladh (https://prtraveller.blogspot.com/2020/05/prahladh-devotional-drawing.html), who dedicated a lot of his early schooling years to sketching pictures of deities, especially of Narasimha. This story is about a 16 year old who has this weekend launched a series of paintings based on Thiruvalluvar’s works. 

Carrying forward her early interest in Tamil Culture, she began exploring the Thirukural reading the translated version of Gopalkrishna Gandhi. Picking up around 25 of the Saint Poet’s sonnets, Tarika Ram, a resident of Prithvi Avenue, Abhiramapuram, spent hundreds of hours understanding the significance of the messages and then went about translating them into abstract expressionist paintings. 

One of her paintings is on the ‘Paths’ in life. She has interpreted Kural 673 and presented it using Acrylic and rope on canvas inspiring the audience to not lose hope in life for this painting depicts finding other routes when one path is blocked. 

In another painting, she has ‘coolly’ presented the importance of controlling anger in life for otherwise it could spread virulently as fire.

On her painting on ‘fortune’ in life, she says that just as a village pond gets filled with rain, fortune blesses the good man’s cellar with grain.

She has picked another sonnet that remains very relevant even today a couple of thousand years after Thiruvallur penned it. Using acrylic on canvas, she expresses the importance of good deeds every day that she says will help one grow as strong as a rock and keep the harms away from us.

Kural 522 in a way endorses how her parents have given her the freedom to choose her own path in life. Spotting her passion for arts, they engaged an art teacher, Diana Shatish, when she was just 10 to help her pursue the artistic route. On this sonnet, her presentation provides insights into how having helpful family members is like being in a garden of fragrant flowers.

If Kural 522 was about her family’s support, Kural 373 is one that seems to have given her the confidence to pursue her interests. Using acrylic and pages from a book collaged on canvas, Tarika has interpreted this song to express the view that book learning can be broken, disjointed and disconnected whereas wisdom involves complete understanding.

In this first phase of expressing Thiruvalluvar’s verses through her abstract paintings, Tarika has presented her thoughts on true friendship (using cardboard and acrylic), the importance of Kind Words and how it spreads joy all around (using buff papers, markers and acrylic) and the transformational power that even small helpful acts can create.

Those that visited the solo exhibition on Sunday morning at the Cholamandalam Artists’ Village in Injambakkam were so touched with this teenager’s presentation that they expressed hope of Tarika continuing to add to her ‘Thiruvalluvar’ portfolio in 2023.  They hoped that sometime into the future she would be able to complete the entire set of 1330 couplets.

The two solo exhibition was inaugurated on Saturday evening by MM Murugappan, Executive Chairman of the Murugappa Group. Soon after the launch, quite a few that were present were keen to pick up these paintings but much to their disappointment, Tarika told them that this series was not for sale at the moment!!!

While ‘Thirukuralin Arivurai’ has been her biggest solo exhibition to date, Tarika has been showcasing her passion for art every Navarathri making elaborate art installations.

In the last few years, one has seen many teenage cricketers dedicating themselves full time to their area of interest. But rarely have we seen a teenager all charged up and pursuing his/her passion for art relegating academics to the side. Tarika is an expressionist and this first weekend of January, her passion for expressing her views on a subject came to the fore in the form of presenting Thiruvalluvar’s messages for life through abstract paintings.

This section will track her artistic delivery in the future.