Rajan Krishnan's (b.1967, Kerala, India) art is very sensitive to his immediate natural environment. The fields and villages of the Kerala of his youth play the role of 'principal protagonis' in most of his works, expressing his deepest aesthetic proclivities. His early works are slightly sentimental in their depiction of childhood memories of home, but this phase seems to have given way to a more assertive cynicism, which unflinchingly records the sudden and sweeping changes wrought on the landscapes he has known and loved.
Art historian Kathleen Wyma writes, “Krishnan’s paintings seize on sites of crystallized memory as critical interventions into the present. Re-calling and re-recollecting the ebb and flow of time (both real and imagined). His images simultaneously evoke the will to remember and the desire to heed the accretions of localized time.” In our current moment, as questions of climate worsen and the illusion of development as progress remains, every intentional stroke of Krishnan’s brush acts as a tool for contemplation. Scenes of dried up rivers, singular fish, and labyrinth-like groves invite us to reflect on the past, present, and future.
Rajan Krishnan passed away in 2016 after suffering a brain hemorage the previous year. The artist was 47.