[brraverishhh]

This interview was taken in 2004

His last visit to the city was to receive the prestigious Raja Ravi Varma Puraskaram and this time A Ramachandran and his wife Tan Chameli were in this city to spend their holidays.
A native of Attingal, Ramachandran after his post graduation in Malayalam worked for AIR, as a staff artiste for sometime. He later joined Jamia Islamia as a lecturer and retired as a Professor.
“Since my child hood I nurtured a fascination for art” says the artist. In the initial stages his works were large with powerful figuration.
He joined Santiniketan and took a Diploma in fine arts. Born to Tan Yun Shan and Chen Nai-wei his Tan Chameli is also a product of Santiniketan. Spiritually, a Buddhist her father was a close associate of Mao Tse Tung. ‘My father met Tagore, in Malayasia and was highly influenced by him. That was how he visited Santiniketan. My father took it as MISSION to spread the message of Tagore through inter civilization cooperation” she says. It was her father who established Cheena Bhavan at Viswa Bharati, Sino-Indian society at Nanking, and the world Buddhist Academy at Bodh Gaya. “It was Rabindranath Tagore who christened me” she says. Her association with Ramachandran culminated in their marriage.

Ramachandran’s work underwent a sea change in the 80 s. Influenced by the tribal community in Rajasthan, its vibrant ethos gripped his imagination. Tan but prefers to paint nature. Swaying coconut palms, in Chinese ink, leaves and branches of climbers, different hues, of lotus flowers, are a few of Tan Chameli’s impressive works.
Ramachandran’s sculptures are more intriguing in formal terms than his paintings. His command over lines, colors and forms, creates a visual play. They are vibrant teeming with burgeoning life. In one of his works, one can find the presence of the artist in the form of a butterfly, or a snail. “It is like me becoming the part of the work” he remarked and added
‘It is a fantasy like our myths. We as a civilization have evolved a highly imaginative culture unlike the European one” and for him Ramkinkar is his guru.

For him art is an extension of visual culture. Our temples, festivals, palaces, are examples of visual culture. With the onslaught of western style we have lost our traditional touch and hence the visual culture is getting fragmented.

Our Maharajas had a broad outlook. The king may not be an artist or a musician. But he patronized them. Raja Ravi VARMA HAD A LANGUAGE AND THAT PERIOS IS OVER. There was literally stagnation after him. K C S Panicker had a different style. Ramachnadran had his doctoral thesis on Mural paintings of Kerala.
Yellow space, moving bodies, peep hole, metamorphosis, last supper, grave diggers, end of Yadhavas, and Kalinga war were his popular works.

Ramachandran designs stamps. His children literatures were published in Japan England, and the USA, besides in India. HE HAS organized dozens of one man shows and two retrospectives.
A traveling exhibition of his works, in oil, line drawings and water colors were displayed at all major cities under the title “Reality in search of Myth”
The diversity of his art and his craftsmanship over a number of media is breath taking. “I have done a number of political works. I realized that its life span is short. I was an angry young man then. Now I am old and happy. The artist’s world is large. When I realize it I became old” he confessed. Two volumes of his works RAMACHANDRAN A RETROSPECTIVE by R. Shivakumar, will be released shortly. The work deals with the life and 40 years of his works.