Paresh Maity’s Luminous Terrains explores light and landscape in art

At a clip erstwhile conversations astir creation are progressively shaped by spectacle, scale, and the urgency of newness, creator Paresh Maity turns toward thing older and steadier: the landscape. 

His latest exhibition, Luminous Terrains,presented by Art Alive Gallery, is presently connected presumption astatine the Center for Contemporary Art (CCA) successful Delhi’s Bikaner House. It gathers impressions from crossed geographies — from the Dal Lake successful Kashmir to the French Riviera— yet feels little similar a travelogue and much similar an inward return. 

For Paresh, this is not a caller preoccupation but a homecoming. “More than 5 decades ago, erstwhile I decided to prosecute art, I was coating lone landscapes,” helium reflects. “Even arsenic a child, I was drawn to them instinctively, due to the fact that they were astir Nature. And for me, Nature is beingness itself.”

Returning to light

If this accumulation marks a renewed engagement with terrain, it besides extends a longstanding speech with airy — a thread that ran done his earlier accumulation Infinite Light successful 2022. But wherever that assemblage of enactment traversed abstraction and figuration, present the look unfolds wholly done the land.

The paintings are expansive and often meditative. They bash not effort to papers but to evoke thing that echoes the philosophical lineage Paresh acknowledges, recalling Aristotle’s reflection that creation imitates Nature. Yet imitation present is little astir replication and much astir resonance.

Landscapes arsenic memory

From the ghats of Varanasi to the shifting waters of Venice, Paresh’s works often consciousness similar ocular diaries — though helium resists the thought that they are painted from nonstop reflection alone.

“When I travel, I sketch constantly. Sometimes I adjacent overgarment connected the spot,” helium says. “But later, successful the studio, I don’t trust connected photographs oregon adjacent my earlier sketches. The acquisition stays successful my mind. The light, the emotion, the feeling of the spot resurface naturally.”

Revisiting places becomes little astir geography and much astir time. Returning to Srinagar, for instance, is not an enactment of repetition but rediscovery, says Paresh. 

“The scenery whitethorn beryllium the same, but the acquisition is ne'er the same,” helium notes. “Time changes, airy changes, and on with that, I excessively change.”

The quality of place

For Paresh, each portion carries its ain ocular language. The rugged earthiness of Madhya Pradesh, with its burnt sienna tones and crisp light, contrasts with the softer openness of Rajasthan, wherever mustard fields glow and godforsaken airy diffuses crossed soil and scrub.

In Venice, helium finds lyricism; successful confederate France, determination is radiance that erstwhile drew impressionists, each of whom sought to seizure fleeting light.

“We are a state of light,” Paresh says. “Everywhere you question successful India, determination is simply a almighty radiance successful the landscape. The tendency to seizure that fleeting infinitesimal is cardinal to painting.”

Colour, medium, and intuition

His attack to colour is simply a blend of reflection and instinct. Paresh laughs, “For me, coating is similar preparing a bully curry. Everything has to travel unneurotic — the spices, the manus that stirs it, and the volition down it.”

This layered sensibility informs his prime of mean arsenic well. The accumulation brings unneurotic oils, acrylics, watercolours, and drawings, each responding to antithetic affectional registers of light.

“Sometimes watercolour feels astir honest, particularly erstwhile I privation to seizure aboriginal greeting mist,” helium explains. “At different times, lipid and acrylic connection strength. They let maine to physique strength and scale.”

Despite being shaped by travel, his works are suffused with stillness, though Paresh is speedy to constituent retired that stillness does not mean inertia.

“A canvas whitethorn not physically move, yet it carries an interior vibration,” helium says. “When idiosyncratic stands earlier my work, I privation the coating to talk quietly, to disturbance thing wrong them.”

A shared journey

The accumulation besides coincides with the metallic jubilee of Art Alive Gallery, with whom Maity has shared a 25-year association.

“The narration betwixt a assemblage and an creator is ever a two-way journey,” helium reflects. “My work is to make with honesty. The assemblage helps the enactment scope the audience.”

In Luminous Terrains, that travel — crossed places, memories, and airy — feels little similar a culmination and much similar an ongoing speech with the satellite extracurricular and within. 

The accumulation is connected until March 10 from Monday to Saturday, 11am to 7pm astatine Center for Contemporary Art (CCA), Bikaner House, New Delhi