IT'S NOT A FIELD DAY

CITIES are like wounds on the earth," says artist PR Satheesh, speaking about Delhi, where his exhibition "The Restless Field' opens this week.

- PANKIL JHAJHRIA

Pointing to the capital's pollution and environmental stress, he describes the city as a place of constant tension shot through with ecological unease, a theme which runs through his works.

His paintings are about agrarian landscapes, climate uncertainty, and everyday struggle of farmers and the rural life. Born into a farming family in Bisonvalley village in Kerala's Idukki district, and raised on a cardamom plantation bordering a dense forest, his works have been inspired from the land he has lived with -and depended on.

"Raised in a remote region of Kerala placed me in a close relationship with nature from an early age," he says. "The landscape was not just a backdrop. It was a living presence that shaped my imagination instinc tively" Unsurprisingly, rural figures, farm animals, and the terrain appear tightly bound to one another, and indistinguishable, in his works. But their forms are unsettled, peculiar, and dense. Opening at Delhi's Galerie Mirchandani + Steinruecke, 'The Restless Field' (from December 19 to January 24, 2026) is a collection of artworks created over several years by the artist, from 2015 to works done more recently.

Returning to the land