Bird from the Grove by the River

My paintings are often described as depicting a post-human landscape where traces of human activity and presence have almost been entirely lost in what has come about after. I live and work in Kerala and have been influenced heavily by the surroundings I have grown up in - I use the landscape and the elements around me to construct a psychological landscape. For me, landscape is filtered through personal and communal memory - of change, of time passing and of loss. These works often have a dark, desolate atmosphere to them but it is also important to look for signs of emerging life - a fish in the river perhaps or a bird appearing suddenly in the grove.

I work in series, and the two paintings I have chosen come from the series 'Ancestry'. The series comprises 15 paintings that were inspired by returning to my birthplace and discovering that the Nila river that once thrived there is now devastated. Dark debris has replaced the golden sands that were there; crumbling structures and stark shrubbery have replaced the luscious foliage of the past. These paintings hover between memory and actuality, between shared perceptions of the past and the tangible, yet continually shifting realities of our present and future.