M. SURIYAMOORTHY

Bio

M. Suriyamoorthy is an artist in a league of his own. He is a one-man movement creating ripples in the art world with a unique process and procedure in place. His colours and pigments are entirely created by him from scratch. For starters, he uses the waters of the holy rivers of India – the Brahmaputra, the Ganges, the Godavari, the Krishna, and the Cauvery and the Abhishekam waters from various temples for his paintings.

When his father, who was a Siddha practitioner, passed, the medicines were falling into disuse. Suriyamoorthy began to mix the various medical ingredients to achieve the colours he wanted. He also ground-up seashells to derive white, took natural gum and bark of the trees in his garden for other colours. These handmade colours mixed with the waters of the holy rivers and temples that he collects are the only things that make their way into his paintings. His formula for each colour took him many years to perfect. His formula pigments, he assures, will retain their qualities of colour and brightness for more than half a century.

He works in various mediums like acrylic, oil, pastel, ink on paper and canvas and is one of the few artists to do not follow any old master or any art movements of the art world. The genuineness of his works leaps out at the viewer and appeals in a way like no other.

He has been a student of Government College of Arts and Crafts (Chennai), has been a State Lalit Kala Akademi scholar, National Scholar at the MS University, Baroda, has been a recipient of Senior Fellowship from the Department of Culture, Government of India and Sri SH Daya Fellowship, Mumbai.

He has, to his credit, more than forty-seven prestigious awards from national and international organisations, international solo and group exhibits. His works are collections at various museums, fine arts academies and even the archaeological department of Tamil Nadu.