Welcome to the visual abode by Kottayam Nazeer, an exquisite mimicry artist, starring actor, paint artist, and the upcoming director of the Malayalam entertainment industry. It is his restless endeavor to extend the boundaries of expression in the art that made him master them. Though he did not pursue painting as a part of his profession and majored in mimicry stage shows and acting, it’s his childhood passion that makes him paint regularly. The elements of art are combined into expressive patterns in order to represent real or supernatural phenomena, to interpret a narrative theme. As an artist, he decided to use mainly oil painting, acrylic colors, and watercolor as a medium to give life to his masterpiece.
Way before he got astonished by the art of making people laugh through his mimicry and acting talent, he used to do sketching and poster color paintings since childhood. However Post his education, he started pursuing acting and mimicry stage shows which brought fortune to him, but the true artist never left his talent behind as along with his job he practiced painting. Living through the lockdown widened his talent and his paths crossed with different ideas which resulted in certain unique masterpieces.
During his early stages of painting, he focused on Indian gods and goddesses. However, during the lockdown series, he dwelled into tigers, wrinkled faces, and foreigners. he also left his signature on 6-foot paintings which amazed the viewers. His paintings also feature forests, rivers, animals, and other beautiful landscapes. While often certain artists’ complex religious and cultural color symbologies may be understood by very few, the emotional response even from laymen to the paintings denotes his success as an artist.
One of the best paintings which went a sensation on the internet was the painting of Dikambaran a dark-sided character in the film Ananthabadram, The film was inspired by the paintings of Raja Ravi Varma, Theyyam, and Kathakali dance movements, and Kalaripayattu martial art forms. The said painting turned out to be so realistic that it was difficult to differentiate between a photograph and his piece of art.
Yet another best painting the artist has made is an untitled piece of art that showed the navarasa, a highly stylized technique in the invocation of emotions developed in bharatanatyam and kathakali. The unique feature of the painting is the varied feature of human emotions from anger, agony, love, sorrow, etc; which was enunciated by bharathamuni in Natya shastra was portrayed through a dog. Inspired by several English artists he also has done a few illusory paintings say, pictures of a tiger and once we closely look upon it there are hidden figures or faces amongst them.
The majority of his paintings are life like as a photograph wherein the only difference is that it is his eyes that act as a lens and his magical hands appears to be the camera sensor and it is the canvas that finally becomes the perfect piece of film with all the right colors.
