LEAD THE FIELD

In 'Liminal Geographies', on view at Vadehra Art Gallery, veteran artist Paramjit Singh takes inspiration from memory and observation to paint vast, textured landscapes of the fields from his childhood

- PANKIL JHAJHRIA

Artist Paramjit Singh

PARAMJIT Singh is 91 years old now, and his love for the fields and forests of his childhood, and the wonder with which he looked at nature, remain intact. He fondly recalls his long walks through the fields of Punjab with his grandfather—a “very mystic” man. Those wanderings, it seems, remain etched in his memory.

The artist brings these memories to life in 'Liminal Geographies', on view till April 10 at Delhi's Vadehra Art Gallery. Marking five years since Singh's last solo presentation, the exhibition features works created over the past year and a half. These paintings, made in oil on canvas, reflect Singh's connection with vast landscapes as well as individual trees, streams, and paths, which have been depicted through textured brushstrokes, somewhere between abstraction and realism.

For the exhibition essay, writer-curator and longtime friend of the artist, Kishore Singh, writes, “Paramjit Singh equips us not just with new eyes but also with ways of seeing: that first discovery accompanied with a sense of hesitancies about the unfamiliar. The surreal had informed his work from its very start, when still-life, landscape and the shadows of old structures resulted in a language of dark and light and shadows that held their secrets close.”