For artist Kazhakuttam Saji, it was a moment of clumsiness in which he dropped a glass tumbler that led him to take up glass mural painting, an art that he has now perfected.
Saji, who has been doing oil paintings for the past fifteen years, painted on one side of a broken glass piece and turned it over to realise that the colours appeared to be darker on the other side. This struck his imagination, leading him to develop a technique to create mural paintings on glass with the use of paint, white sand, and Araldite, a brand of industrial adhesive.
Since then, there has been no looking back, with 21 glass mural paintings, inspired by the mural art on the walls of the Guruvayoor and Mammiyoor temples, completed in the last four years.
A native of Pullattukuriyil, Kazhakuttam, Saji was employed at a petroleum company in Abu Dhabi for nine years till 2014. Though he has no received no formal training, he loved art, and would spent his after-work hours painting. It was when his Managing Director chanced upon these paintings, and arranged for them to be exhibited at the National Exhibition Centre in Abu Dhabi that he gained recognition as an artist.
Saji’s paintings have appeared on Bakrid and Eid greeting cards in Abu Dhabi, and he has also been commissioned with the task of painting a portrait of Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan, the founder and former president of the United Arab Emirates.
His glass mural paintings, depicting iconic scenes from Hindu mythology, such as baby Krishna stealing butter, Krishna with his flute and Radha by his side, and Hanuman flying to Lanka with the Maruthua mountain in hand, were on display for at an exhibition at the Trivandrum Women’s Club, Kowdiar.
Source: The Hindu