Engrossing abstraction of Pranav Shah’s paintings
To release the fluidity of colours by using brushes rather smoothly, and creating a certain
musicality on canvasses ,seems to be the hall mark of Pranav’s paintings. There is light, glow and a sense of lightness of being in his works. Done mostly in monochromatic manner, his paintings are able to simmer down our anxieties and apprehensions, and impart a feel of serenity within us, and we are emotively drawn to them in an instant.
The brightness of the colours seen under the sunny Indian sky, gets reflected here, in the same way it got reflected in the rich tradition of Indian miniature paintings ;but the similarity or affinity ends here and we rejoice in Pranav shah’s paintings singularly. A certain feel for space and it’s correlation to the colours is apparent.
To let the colour speak for itself without making any formal or structural design so to say is never easy, but that is what Pranav is inspired to do and he succeeds in this endeavor. There are imaginative suggestions of vistas, blue sky and watery surfaces and one can even find traces of the memories from the outer walls of Ajanta caves, where centuries ago Buddhist monks did wonderful paintings.
Each painting here opens a new chapter of colour synergy and engrosses us to the core to be with this synergy. It sensitively takes us to a journey which becomes explorative at every stage.
There is no hide and seek of ideas or narratives, everything is momentous and of a certain realisation each time.
To define these canvasses with any art history references or to contextualize them in any specific abstract perspectives, seems unwarranted, as with their open ended approach they stand for themselves. But there is no denying of the fact that these have resonances of paths treaded by artists earlier as well in the field of abstraction. He himself mentions the name of known German artist Gerhard Richter as an inspirational figure. But Pranav with an unrelenting explorative approach brings a freshness to his works in the mode of abstraction ,which can be cherished .
New Delhi Prayag Shukla
7th March Poet & Art critic