A Malabar trogon ( Harpactes fasciatus ) sketched in loving detail with pen and ink, stares out from a stack of drawings on V. Gokula’s teapoy at his home in K.K Nagar. “If you see this bird’s dramatic colouring against the deep green foliage of the rainforest, you will be mesmerised,” says Dr. Gokula, as he brings out more samples of his wildlife drawings.
An assistant professor in zoology at the National College, Tiruchi since 2001, Dr. Gokula is a self-taught artist who channels his talent into any subject and technique that catches his fancy.
Of late, wildlife and its conservation have emerged as a favourite subject, because of their indelible link to our own existence.
Dr. Gokula was born in 1969 in Jayamkondacholapuram, and remembers being discouraged by his father, a primary school teacher, from taking up art seriously because he didn’t think it had any job prospects.
Parental disapproval notwithstanding, the young Gokula was sure he would pursue art, if not as a profession, then at least as a serious hobby.
“I’ve been drawing and painting ever since I can remember,” says Dr. Gokula.
“Initially, I used to copy out whatever I saw, from photographs and other paintings, after which I became very skilled in the techniques due to repetition,” he adds.
The walls of his drawing room are decorated with pencil portraits of world leaders, another subject that has preoccupied him since childhood. In the course of the interview, he pulls out a letter from the Vatican office thanking him for the portrait of Pope John Paul that he had sent as a ten-year-old in 1979.
Saving Mother Nature
The conversation today is peppered with references to nature conservation, a field that Dr. Gokula was introduced to when he specialised in zoology.
He holds a Master’s degree in both Zoology and Geography, and his doctoral thesis on the nesting behaviour of birds in the Mudumalai Wildlife Sanctuary was guided by Dr. Lalitha Vijayan, a student of famed Indian ornithologist Salim Ali.
It was the first Ph.D thesis of the Salim Ali Centre for Orinithology and Natural History, Coimbatore.
“Since I was interested in behavioural ecology, I would first sketch the animal’s behaviour and then go to the next level,” says Dr. Gokula. “My thesis was totally theoretical, but I used pictorial elements to study,” he adds, while showing a sample of his line drawings of the Spot-billed Pelican ( Pelecanus philippensis ) for the journal China Birds .
As an academic-illustrator, Dr. Gokula has contributed his artwork to several national and international publications. But he has never sold his drawings commercially.
“I have exhibited my paintings abroad in Indonesia and Vietnam, on behalf of National College, and the money that they have earned have gone to a charitable cause such as conservation,” says Dr. Gokula.
Will this change after he participates in an upcoming art exhibition featuring five artists based in Tiruchi? “I don’t think so. I’m hoping to help poor students in our college with the sales proceeds,” he says.
Ecological crisis
Making wildlife biology a part of the curriculum and public consciousness is very pertinent, feels Dr. Gokula. “In Indonesia, they are still discovering new bird species. We in India seem to be losing species at a comparable rate,” he rues. “We were getting the Great Indian Bustard ( Ardeotis nigriceps ) in Lalgudi 60 years ago. As the grasslands vanish, the birds like Lesser Florican ( Sypheotides indicus ) vanish with them.”
He blames the nation’s lax laws and rampant hunting for the mass decimation of wildlife. “In Kolli Hills, for instance, everyone has a gun. Now you cannot see any large mammals that were native to this habitat, like sloth bears and leopards,” he says.
The plight of the White-backed Vulture ( Gyps africanus ) is yet another example of our ecological crisis, he says. In Asia, the bird has been wiped out in large numbers after eating the carcasses of farm animals injected with the veterinary drug Diclofenac since the 1990s. “Vultures are the scavengers of the food chain, and they keep us safe from diseases. Even the crow, sparrow and dog are all good scavengers, but we don’t allow them to flourish. Unless the government plays a more proactive role in conservation, our future generations will have to see wildlife only in photographs or zoo enclosures,” he says.
Style file
“There’s a little of everyone’s style in my work,” replies Dr. Gokula when asked about his influences. “From Tamil artists, I have been impressed by Trostky Marudhu and (film actor/artist) Sivakumar, whose subjects I’ve reproduced through stippling (dots)” he says. “Not having learned Art formally, I find myself discovering new things everyday, especially from the Internet, where I picked up knife-painting skills.
“I’m lazy,” he laughs, “I can’t work on any painting for more than an hour, which is why most of my artwork is small and medium-sized, and in easier media like watercolours.”
For the past 10 months, Dr. Gokula has ventured into cartooning, and now uploads one cartoon everyday on his Facebook page. “In India, we don’t have too much of a sense of humour,” he says with a cartoonist’s skill of understatement.
“Even within the family, there is a seriousness in our relationships that doesn’t allow for comic relief. So our expression of humour is not as it is in the West. But then, it is our seriousness that has helped us achieve so much as a nation, so I suppose it’s better not to change that too much.”
His dream project happens to be an illustrated guide of all the wildlife species of southern India. But it’s going to be a long trudge towards that goal. “Of the thousand bird species in this region, I have seen only 658 because of my project work,” he says. “Wildlife artist Carl D’Silva, who illustrated Salim Ali’s Book of Indian Birds , died on July 19. He was as knowledgeable about ornithology as Salim Ali. I want to develop myself to that level of expertise first.”
So what does he feel about ‘blockbuster’ artists? “Their fame came after a long life of struggle, and sometimes posthumously, as in the case of Vincent Van Gogh,” he says. “Only if you detach yourself from the subject, can you give your artistic originality a chance to shine. If you show your bias in your drawing, you will lose respect. This is one reason why artists function in such small circles,” says Dr. Gokula.
See Dr. Gokula’s work on www.vgokula.com
