The Blue Lotus magazine issue 53

Murali Nagapuzha Lush greenery, little butterflies dancing on greenishyellow leaves, bees sucking on a blooming lotus, the haunting quiescence of an ancestral home ... artist Muraly Nagapuzha's paintings seek to touch and awaken long forgotten childhood memories and tempt you with the bewitching beauty of nature.

For all of us caught in the web of city life, where young ones are more at ease fiddling with gadgets than spotting a caterpillar, the collection on display at the Kasthuri Sreenivasan Trust Culture Centre on Avanashi Road will make you pause, re-wind and recollect those summer holidays at your grandmother's house spent chasing an unruly calf or wading through slush to pluck out that half-open lotus.

"Nature is a predominant theme in my paintings. I come from a village in Kerala where life is about small things, the butterfly and the cows, of children playing hide and seek and going fishing. It is the simplicity of village life which I have tried to capture here," says the artist about his eighth solo show.

An idealistic vision where man, beast and birds exist in harmony is splashed in colours by Nagapuzha.

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