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P. Gnana |
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Born and brought
up in Neyveli (Tamil Nadu), P. Gnana is now a distinguished Singapore-based
International artist whose works are collected in Latin America, Europe,
South Asia and Southeast Asia. Gnana is also a recipient of the LASALLE
Scholarship of the LASALLE- SIA College of the Arts (Singapore), from
where he received his formal training in the art of painting.
Fourteen of Gnana's abstract paintings (2m x 1.5 m each) were commissioned in 2005 by Singapore's Ascendas Pte Ltd for the International Tech Park in Chennai. Gnana has been interviewed by Lianhe Zaobao (a major Singaporean Chinese newspaper), Expat Living Singapore magazine, Bohemia magazine, Arts Buzz at Arts Central (Singapore's national TV), Sun TV (Tamil cable network) and Raj TV (national TV of India). As of 2006, he has held 6 solo art exhibitions (4 were in Singapore and 2 were in India). Gnana's artworks are collected by the East of East Gallery (United Kingdom), Lycée Français de Singapour, Coutts Bank, and numerous individual and corporate art connoisseurs. About The Eternal Companion Series Having been a professionally-trained mechanical engineer before receiving his formal training in painting, an enormous sense of perseverance and an undaunted desire to 'search' via art, are what truly made P. Gnana the significant creator he is today. With a sharp sensitivity towards emotions and situations that are both his and of others, Gnana has never shied away from attempting various modes of expression as well as technical nuances within the realm of painting. In the early days of his career as an artist (about thirteen years ago), Gnana was almost entirely drawn towards figurative rendition that was enhanced by his undeniable strength in creating colours that were appetising to the art-hungry. Then, there came a phase whereby he decided to discard figurative expression as he realised a spiritual challenge in pursuing abstraction in his artworks. "Can I express what I want to, without figures?" was the question that lured him to the unfathomable world of abstract expressionism. Never did he expect that he would find such an amazing sense of spiritual comfort and spontaneity in the techniques of 'reverse layering' and automatism (in short, free and uncontrolled expression of the subconscious) in the creation of his highly emotive and chaotically intense abstractions on canvas. The works of abstract expressionists, surrealists and neoplasticists such as Andre Mason, Jackson Pollock and Piet Mondrian, have been great inspirations for Gnana. This was a monumental phase that fetched Gnana an absolute sense of freedom as an artist - art for the artist's sake. However, every
process reaches a saturation point. Gnana's obsessive affair with pure
abstraction provided him with an important, lucid insight into nothing
else but himself. Having had daringly submerged his spirit into two imperative
opposite modes of expression - figurative and pure abstraction - Gnana
started to look towards another challenge, with a thirst for another exciting
change. And this time, he found the challenge in a very down-to-earth
thematic concept - the psyche of the human being who dotes on his receptive
animal. The cow has always been one of Gnana's favourite animals. When
Gnana was a little boy, his parents used to own and breed cows in their
home in Neyveli. This childhood affiliation towards the cow was beautifully
rekindled through his much-appreciated current body of artworks: the heart-wrenching
Eternal Companion series of paintings (oil on canvas). |