About My Art:
Colours are a mystery to me. The universe is a mystery to me. Every living being. I find magic when colours mingle. When stars whisper their secrets. When eyes meet. I paint to share my joy of discovery. I do not paint this or this or that. I play with colours. With movement. With space. What emotions can I evoke? How share joy and pain and uncertainties? How be a child?
Milan Mathew
Past exhibitions: New York, Mumbai, Singapore, Luzern, Lausanne, Manila Upcoming: SwissArt Expo, August 21-25, Zurich.
About Me
To be fortunate in a world full of strife and poverty is a blessing. I am a very fortunate person. I live in a free country. The air I breath is clean. I have food, shelter, and clothing. I have colours. I have the earth and sky, and everything I need.
I live in a democratic country, where the government is formed by all the major political parties, where decisions are taken after long, painstaking deliberations and where the citizens are involved in the decision-making process. Despite all its shortcomings, I cannot imagine a better place to live in, than Switzerland.
I was born in 1954 in a tiny and insignificant village in Kerala. My parents were barely literate. We lived in a mud hut with walls made of bamboo, with no doors or windows and no electricity. Till I was about nine, I had no umbrella and went to school in the pouring rain with only a banana leaf overhead. Till I was twelve, I had neither footwear, nor a pen, nor a single book to read.
All that changed in May 1966 when I was accepted to a missionary school five hundred miles from home. I was twelve when I was introduced to western literature, film, art, and music. At the mission school, I led a life of discipline and learning. I also discovered my talent as an artist and my love for books. It was in this school for the privileged few that I became aware of the Holocaust, the violence against the indigenous people of America, the tragedy of slavery and the horrors of war.
Christian values influenced me deeply. The missionaries introduced me to Jyoti Sahi, a Christian artist living in a village far outside the city of Bangalore. It was there that I began, under the influence of Jyoti and Jane Sahi, to think of the relationship of Christianity to other religions, especially to Hinduism. Between 1973 and 1978 I worked mostly for churches and missionary institutions doing commissioned artwork. In my art, I tried to incorporate the lives of the people around me: The life of brick-makers, fishermen, landless farmers.
In 1976 my involvement with the youth of the surrounding areas enabled me to participate in a three-month seminar organized by the Christian Conference of Asia (CCA) in Singapore. As part of this programme, I visited the Philippines, where I lived with slum dwellers released from prison under the Ferdinand Marcos dictatorship. On returning to India, I was awarded a scholarship to study Mass Communications at Silliman University in the Philippines by the CCA.
In 1979 I was invited to join the Communication Foundation for Asia, Manila (CFA), to be part of their Flying Team. It was in Manila that I first worked on a short film under the guidance of Lino Brocka, the Father of Philippine Cinema. During my stay at the CFA, I was also asked to be consultant to the Ministry of Health of Papua New Guinea, and to help design a set of posters for their health programme.
In 1981 I was awarded a generous scholarship of the Konrad Adenauer Foundation (KAS) of Germany. I studied German and enrolled to study Film Direction at the Munich Film Academy (HFF). After completing my studies in 1985, I migrated to Switzerland. In 1990 I joined Swiss National Television as a redactor for feature films. Between 1985 and 1990 I was a part of the OCIC and Third World Film Juries of Berlin and Mannheim and in 1988 president of the Ecumenical Jury in Locarno. In December 2013 I retired early to pursue my passions: art, literature, and film.
My ‘autobiography’ Kleine Rose written between 2013 and 2018 won an award of the University of Zurich. (Online at www.meet-my-lfe.net). I hope to find a literary agent for a fictionalised, abridged, and edited version of Kleine Rose in English. I am struggling with my debut novel Sweet Days of Sin.
Yes, I love to tell stories. Here is one:
When I was only a few days old, my mother, then under a stringent diet prescribed by her watchful mother-in-law, ate some meat rather hastily. and a tiny bone splitter stuck in her throat. Everyone in the family tried to extract the sharp piece of bone but their attempts were futile. Mother was taken to a hospital far away. There was no way of feeding me milk. I was too weak and too small for anything else. My grandmother carried me in her arms across the barren hills to all the women far and near who were breastfeeding their children. These gentle women nourished me. I grew up knowing I owe my life to several mothers, Muslims, Hindus, and Christians alike. Looking back, it is all the marvellous people who have come into my life that have enriched me and made my life’s journey unique.
Milan Mathew
WELCOME TO MY WORLD:
PAINTINGS
My art is a journey of discovery. I believe true art is an act of creation. It exalts me to imagine a world no one has ever seen. Creation is not always joyous. I am often filled with doubt and anguish. I play with colours. I also fight with colours. With forms, spaces and motion.I ask myself, how express joy or pain or despair? How radiate, how share a sense of hope? Above all, how quench my quest for wonder?