Santhanaraj with Fellow artists and writers

Santhanaraj Honored

Thiruvannamalai based poet and writer Ananda Surya features the felicitation ceremony of the veteran painter A.P.Santhanaraj at Vamsi Books Thiruvannamalai.

One of India’s senior artists A.P. Santhanaraj was honored in his home town in the Tamil fashion of wrapping a shawl around him by a representative of the Thiruvannamalai Municipal Council.  The occasion was the opening of an exhibition of art works by 3 artists including Santhanaraj, veteran film art director P. Krishnamoorthy and the young contemporary painter Gayatri Gamuz in Vamsi Books and Publishers in Thiruvannamalai town in Northern Tamil Nadu.

The seventy five year old Santhanaraj was born in a village adjoining Thiruvannamalai and spent most of his adult life in Chennai as student, teacher and then Principal of the Madras Arts and Crafts College.  His eccentric nature and emotional passion left a deep impression on his students as testified by P. Krishnamoorthy who is himself a student of Santhanaraj…  His two year stint as teacher in the College of Fine Arts, Trivandrum, in its volatile early years, still remains as a seminal influence on his students.

P. Krishnamoorthy born in 1948 in Kaveripoompatnam in Thanjavur, has won National and State Awards for his film art direction and costumes from different regional cinema.  Apart from his fine arts degree from Chennai he has also studied mural art in Rajasthan.

The show with six drawings by Santhanaraj, four acrylic paintings by Krishnamoorthy and six oil paintings by Gayatri Gamuz will be on till 25th March..

Contemporary Tamil short story writer Bawa Chelladurai, director of Vamsi Books, said, “Our efforts are to promote a new literary and visual culture but the first step is to honor the old. Thiruvannamalai is honored to have such an illustrious artist like Santhanaraj born here”.