Filterism: Creativity at its best

Spending a good few minutes on one painting and slowly glancing at another is a common scene at the art galleries. But Leslie Thyagarajan is one of the versatile artists, who visually challenge you with his thought provoking art of ‘Filterism’ and weave a magic around you.

According to Leslie, this new art form is being exhibited for the first time in the world, in Mysore, at his premises in Vidyaranyapuram.

An engineer by profession, Leslie had served as a lecturer at National Institute of Engineering for three years, when he finally decided to become a full time artist. That is the time when he moved to Denmark, and then there was no turning back, as he mastered all forms of art, including  Mysore painting, line art, portraits, abstract paintings and others and has finally settled in Mysore and plans of setting up a gallery of his own.

In his penchant of creating an unique style of his own, he came out with a new kind of art ‘filterism’, which involves incredible imagination of lines and colours. Talking about ‘Filterism’, Leslie says it is a style of painting that involves two to four layers of images. At the first glance, it appears like a bunch of colourful animals. When one sees the same image with the help of different lighting, you can find a rather completely different image.

Optical illusions can play with your senses and sometimes confuse and surprise the onlookers.  It is interesting to see the art lovers utilising their intelligence and exploring and not move away just by appreciating the painting, he says with a smile.

Inclined more towards Hinduism and its culture, he says he has tried to bring in more of nature into his art and has used ‘panchabhootha’ as the base for any painting and one such spectacular one is the ‘Om Tree’, which resembles Lord Shiva watching over his son Ganesha has more than 250 icons hidden in it. Learning the art of sketching at the age of three years just looking at the popular paintings at the Jaganmohan Palace gallery, he dreams of donating one of his paintings to the gallery, if space is provided.

The expo of ‘Filterism’ - The Elusive Elephants is being held on December 17, 18 and 19  to know the pulse of the art lovers. Now, settled in his native town here, he is planning to hold an exhibition in the near future at Kalamandira.

In addition to this, he is also a performer and teacher of magic, origami, puppetry, ventriloquism, flute and others.