Santosh Kumar Sahni’s Paintings: Water Life with Myriad Textures

Santosh said “Water is life,” we all recognise it without any doubt.  It is the lifeline that feeds all living organisms including us. It represents the very essence of life. The five elements of universe are:  Earth, Water, Fire, Air and Space. The cosmos comprises of these dynamic elements and varies in degrees depending upon the structure, nature and function of the created object.

Importance of water has never been more deeply pronounced as it is today and who knows it better than the artist—the painter who has been working  for several years on three layers of charcoal, acrylic and oil — with paintings that incorporate the juxtaposition of images, ideas or materials with, water, mermaid, boat, sailor, fish and more. Santosh Kumar Sahni’s earnestness with which he paints the texture of animal lives along with their habitat — water, and its landscape — reveal a co-habitation that exists and that needs to be carried on without breaking the equilibrium. Sahni has taken water as a metaphor and painstakingly developed the concept into a subject in these paintings.

Even as we are concerned with dwindling and deteriorating ecological balances and feel helpless, painter in Sahni , slowly but steadily, configures what is needed to be done and the result is everyone to see. And, no doubt, he looks as an accomplished painter.

Born, and brought up in Darbhanga and educated in Darbhanga and Chhttisgarh, 38-year-old Sahni envisions the universe and brings in the creative thinking on his canvases. Like many of his ilk, Sahni is under strong spell of a cultural harmony where the conditions may not be as conducive to contextualize an indigenous culture and new ideas. As a result there is a genuine impulse for new creative surfaces.

Drawings, Charcoal on Canvas