Santosh Verma

Paintings

2011-04-12T08:22:00.000-07:00

Photogaph

2011-04-12T08:14:00.000-07:00

Inflections of Delight

2008-11-28T07:43:00.000-08:00

An artist like Santosh discards the outward appearances of nature, not as material for observation but as an idiom of expression. He needs nature and cannot divorce himself from it. But he can pierce the outward in search of the inward life. At its base are still the varied patterns of unfolding life, in flowers, plants, grasses; the texture of the stones, shells, bark; the sound and movement of water and of bird and insect life; the subtle inflection of cloud and mist and the changing sky are still the sources of his delight.Many in these days of abstraction believe they have transformed nature to a still more elevated articulation. Unfortunately, quite a bit of what is described as abstraction is random and inchoate. These artists do not seem to have felt the charm of root reality, that is, of nature on their pulse. I believe Santosh is one of those who has so felt it. What he has succeeded in doing is to give nature a fresh incarnation. He draws out its essence. Here, in his work, it is this we invariably taste with our eager eyes.He has evolved new ways of suggesting the interwoven rhythms by which the visible word is permeated. Thus he does something far more ‘deeply interfused' as binds together the patterns of shell, the thrust and the swell of the sea, the slant of light upon a leaf, the flight of a bird and a feather fall upon a mossy stone. But none of all this is literally so, purely imaginatively.This is well groomed art, which can do more than delight. It can also enlighten. Experiencing works of this chaste order we as if stand at the mid point of a pendulum's swing--a pendulum of experience that swings outward into both the light as the life around us, and inward into ourselves. Resultantly, thanks to it we seek to penetrate and inform ourselves about the reality that lives deep within us. With it's chastity we can certainly live in our own worlds; look upon it and sense it, for it is the stuff of experience that the artist in the viewer, also, seizes upon, and invests with fresh meanings.I do think Santosh's 'abstraction' enriches our vision. It is not a mere escape or sedative. The overly jangled big city nerves will surely calm themselves with the decorum that there is in his compositions
Keshav Malik

Paintings

2008-11-27T07:13:00.000-08:00

65X65cm Acrylic On Canvas

90X120 cm Acrylic On Canvas

60X75cm Acrylic On Canvas

90X120 cm Acrylic On Canvas

2008-11-26T06:27:00.000-08:00

Water Colour

2008-11-23T08:12:00.000-08:00

A summary of my thoughts

2007-07-01T01:30:00.000-07:00

The human mind is different from the mind of the other beings by its reflexivity and creative capacity. It can raise structures in its imagination before giving things a concrete existence. The human mind, in its multiple layers of consciousness, with their specific characteristics engages with reflections of the visible and invisible layers of reality. Once the mind receives reflections from the multiple layers of reality, it becomes an existential need to express these experiences and make them public. This is the need to share one's pleasure and pain with other human beings. There are many forms of expressions and I have chosen painting for myself. This helps me in expressing my finer existence at the level of abstract being. My paintings are products of a certain level of my consciousness where language and other forms of expression leave me alone. If unconscious has a language, as Lacan, the famous French psychoanalyst, says then there should be a pattern in my paintings. Over the years I have not consciously tried to look for any pattern. But at this age, as it generally happens, one would like to look back. One would like to explore one's own consciousness and try to find out the grammar of it. I think my consciousness is constructed by my physical existence in the geographical area of Benaras. And Benaras is not merely a geographical space, but it is also a cultural space where the collective consciousness, within which I could achieve my personal consciousness, is full of abstract ideas generated by many thinkers like Kabir. Perhaps this is the context of my paintings. I leave it to the people to make sense of them. For me, I have done my bit by expressing myself through them.

2007-06-30T07:08:00.000-07:00

Paintings

2007-06-30T00:02:00.000-07:00

Drawings