Kolluris spiritual sojourn through digital art

HYDERABAD: S R Kolluri a retired petroleum geologist has a penchant for art. And not just any art but digital art. The 70 year-old who took voluntary retirement, was always interested in painting. He had interest in visual arts right from childhood days, he had attempted to paint in acrylic and water colours. Later, the self-taught artist discovered computer graphics would be a much more easier and relatively less messier affair.He started his spiritual sojourn with his project for painting Ramayana with the help of computer in 2001. He took four and a half years to complete the epic the Ramayana in a simple form of computer graphics format in 110 paintings. He had in fact planned to complete in 108 paintings, but had to draw two more to accommodate contexts which he visualised as the best. His graphics were rich in detail and could accommodate all the principal characters of the epic.  “My inspiration to take up the project owed to my mother, Venkatalakshmi, a devotee of Rama. She loved the lord as the epitome of values,” says Kolluri.Every painting, despite being part of the theme, appears to be complete in itself. What perhaps look as an easy process, is actually a little more complicated. Explaining the process, he says, “Each painting is a series of layers that have been super-imposed over each other. So every aspect, every pixel has been individually painted.”  Showing one of his paintings of Shiva he further explains, “The painting of Shiva, Parvati, the flowers, the deepam light, the walls and every other aspect have all been painted separately. These have then been over-layered over each other forming the final painting.”Good causeHis book on Ramayana, which did well in sales, raked in quite a sum for the artist. All of this has been donated to the Sankurathri foundation in Kakinada. The foundation was started by Dr Chandrashekar Sankurathri in memory of his wife Manjeri, son Kiran and daughter Sarada who were killed in the bombing of the Air India flight, off the coast of Ireland in 1985.The foundation runs the Sri Kiran Institute of Opthamology and the Sarada Vidyalayam for destitute children.Graphic paintings of RamayanaSR Kolluri’s book, Computer Graphic Paintings of Sri Ramayana has 232-page. The series of 108 paintings in chronological order have accompanying stories in words told with great detail. The book is priced at Rs 350 and is available in all leading book stores in the city. One of the walls at Sri Sitarama-chandraswamivari Devastanam, Bhadrachalam have a collection of his paintings from the Ramayana series, which he presented to the temple.He took four-and-a-half years to complete the Ramayana in graphics format in 110 paintings. Whether it be the picture of Srirama Pattabhisekham or the life of Rama as a forest dweller in the years of banishment - he could prove that the paintings could be more narrative. He had spent Rs 6 lakhs on the project.