Manjula Padmanabhan’s charcoal and pastel pencil art works on show

The Owl Cat seems to be surveying the world outside the canvas. The curious being, with wings tucked in, one eye blue and the other green, has the body of an owl and the head of a cat. The charcoal and pastel pencil on paper work is one among the 27 drawings by author, cartoonist and artist Manjula Padmanabhan on show in Chennai at Art World, Sarala’s Art Centre.

Writer-artist Manjula Padmanabhan

The exhibition, Knots & Crosses, is her first solo in India after 11 years. Manjula says she produced the bulk of the work in January this year. After two years of the pandemic, “they were just bursting to come out,” she says. All the works on show are in charcoal, a medium Manjula had not greatly experimented with before. “It really dictated the way these pieces evolved. I had not used charcoal before 2020 — I’d never known how flexible it is. From rich, dense black to very soft greys, it’s a very generous medium,” she says. 

Manjula treats her canvases attentively, each frame carrying an intricate world of lines, twists and curves upon it. Many of the drawings depict knots of different kinds — knotted scarves, double knots, strange serpentine beings with human faces and hands entwined in knots, a tree with a knotty canopy. “I became interested in knots a long time ago — for very simple reasons such as tying the shoelaces in my sneakers or the ‘nada’ of my salwar. And also macramé. The idea that knots are a very integral part of our lives — from textiles and shoelaces to fishing nets — and we don’t even notice them — was of interest to me. From the moment of birth, when the umbilical cord is cut… and knotted… we learn the importance of knots.”

Settled in Rhode Island in the US, Manjula says she has been drawing as a cartoonist and illustrator all along, but not as an “artist”. “In March 2020, I participated in an open-show at the DeBlois Gallery in Middletown. An open-show is when local artists are invited to submit work to a group show, at a reduced fee and with no special requirements. I submitted two pieces. It was like waking up from a long sleep, returning to my identity as an artist. I became a member at the gallery. It’s been a really happy but also hard-working time,” she says . 

Manjula’s oeuvre includes novels, plays, short stories, children’s stories and her popular comic strip featuring Suki, an Indian comic character she created. The play  Harvest (1997), won her the Greek Onassis Award. Her first play, Lights Out, written in 1984 based on an eye witness account of a gang-rape, was a huge success. She is currently working on a book set in Delhi that “is not science fiction”.

‘Knots & Crosses’ is on at Sarala’s Art Centre, Chennai, till February 24.