Have you ever looked at a painting and got lost in it’s brush strokes, colors and patterns? Has a whirlpool of colors ever drowned your worries? Colors are therapeutic and that’s what Liju K V feels. His feelings find expression in art and art in water colors. Just like his world of art, Liju’s profession also keeps him close to all things aqua, he is a Marine Engineer in a Chennai based firm.
“I started painting at the age of 6. I won a number of small painting competitions. My parents noticed my talent and they got me enrolled in a hobby class during my vacations. That’s how my interest in art started to grow even further” says Liju. While most kids have their favorite teacher in class, Liju did not depend on any one teacher. His art teachers kept changing and he sees this as a blessing in disguise, “I am glad I did not have a single master else I probably wouldn’t have been able to discover my own style of painting and would have got influenced by their work” confesses Liju. He used to attend hobby classes till class 8th and then he started painting on his own. Be it a park or a vacation or just a room, Liju used to pick up an object and imitate life on canvas.
But it was only when Liju moved out to Chennai for his job as a Marine Engineer that he started exploring his talent more. He found out about Chennai Weekend Artists group through facebook, a group of artists who would voluntarily gather at one place over the weekend and paint in their favorite medium. It is the delicate smudge of the water colors that make these partly abstract paintings of Liju so fascinating. “I love to use water colors because it helps me capture the real sense of the landscape & people” expresses Liju.
While Liju is doing exceedingly well in his professional life, it is his art work that has marked him on the map. He is a winner of National award for exceptional achievement by Ministry of Women & Child development apart from various state level awards since the age of 9. Now Liju’s dream is to create a good volume of work so that he can one day organize his own art exhibition and showcase his work to the world.
