RM Palaniappan is a well-known artist from Chennai who is an alumnus of the equally renowned Government College of Arts and Crafts in Chennai, which has a long roster of art luminaries who have passed out of its portals since independence. He is the recipient of many prestigious awards and honours and has held many solo shows in India and abroad. He has also curated several renowned national exhibitions and is a Life Trustee at Dakshina Chitra (Heritage Museum)/Madras Craft Foundation, Chennai

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His style is largely experimental and exploratory, working with mixed mediums that combine graphics, line drawings and colours to show the diversity of that which he seeks to express – human motivation and behaviour. He has been inspired by mathematics and machines that have contributed to both a sense of precision and abstraction in his renderings.

 

However, this deep engagement with mathematics and science, unusual for a visual artist, taught him much about the dynamics of form and the central role it plays in time and space - the two other pillars of visual art. His influences are varied and range from study World war 2 movies to the simplicity of objects of everyday use. His works try to identify and reconcile the two warring elements of the human condition – the physical and the psychological – which is at the bottom of all human experience, both good and bad.