George.K is a-business professional-turned-artist who works with sculpture, paintings and photography. He has a multi disciplinary approach that encompasses, creative writing and the plastic arts. Initially turning to art to relieve the tension of work, he has now converted a hobby of photography into a full time art practitioner.

His photographic compositions were the starting point of his career as a painter His paintings depict reality as seen by him. It is his means of introspecting on and confronting the visual reality of human existence, the emotions and sentiments which abstraction cannot fully portray. The subject matter for his art often rooted in the local environment and is human centered. Images of people at a time and place dominate the canvas. Vendors selling fruits and flowers, priests and ordinary people in their daily lives, live through canvas further defined with text or verse. His paintings are a representation of the vibrancy of life with verse or words forming either an underlay for the graphics or the graffiti an overlay. The spontaneity of the photograph is translated through the painting and the content further enhanced in a contextual mode. He captures the split second emotion and uses the imagery in his own context. To the images he adds text and graphics. On the canvas is interplay of images, and thoughts represented in words or verse, and graphics. The graffiti, and overlay of letters, his signature, is layered over the realistic imagery. George K’s technique of working involves his paintings through the three fold process of ‘Framing and selection’, ‘Transference or execution’ and ‘creation’. Framing involves digitally photographing an image while the next process was translating this digital image into an oil painting by hoarding painters with suitably altered colours. The final process or ‘creation’ is the completion of the painting by adding the painting surface with verses and words written across. The visual language that he uses is drawn from the world around him such as popular culture, kitsch and graffiti. Mostly his paintings have a central dominant figure with relevant verses or a single word repeated across the entire canvas like a mantra.

George.K has worked on a series of paintings in a super-realistic style layered with a postmodern language of graffiti.

The paintings are inspired from his travelogue. He philosophizes his images in his own mind space creating a labyrinth of ideas & contextualising them. His photographic compositions have become the starting point in his artistic career. These dramatic depictions reflect his keen sense of observation using bill-board artists as an aid.

– Dr. Ashrafi Bhagat

Ms. Ashrafi S. Bhagat M.A., M.Phil, Ph. D. is an Art Historian. She heads the Department of Fine Arts at Stella Maris College, Chennai. She writes artists catalogues and on subject of modern and contemporary art in newspapers, magazines and journals.