Untitled

Artist: Tapan Mitra
Medium: Acrylic on Canvas
Size: 36 × 72 inches (91.44 × 182.88 cm)
Year: 2025

This untitled acrylic painting by Tapan Mitra presents a nighttime landscape, rendered in a distinctive folk-art-inspired style that blends simplicity with rich visual storytelling. With its bold use of color, stylized forms, and whimsical detailing, the work evokes both a sense of tranquility and quiet wonder.

The composition captures a serene, nocturnal view of rolling hills and distant mountains, layered in hues of dark maroon, deep blues, and forest greens. These overlapping forms create a rhythmic terrain that feels both grounded and dreamlike. Scattered across the slopes are small, stylized trees, painted with a deliberate uniformity that adds a patterned texture to the landscape. These trees, with their upright forms and simplified shapes, echo traditional folk or tribal art motifs, giving the work a timeless, almost mythic quality.

Nestled among the elevated ridges are small, pale-colored buildings or structures, which appear subtly illuminated against the darker tones of the hills. Their placement high on the slopes suggests isolated settlements or spiritual retreats, adding to the painting’s quiet narrative—one that feels both personal and universal. A light cream-colored stream winds through the valley below, acting as a visual anchor that gently guides the viewer’s eye through the scene. The softness of this element contrasts with the darker, denser tones of the surrounding landscape, suggesting a life-giving presence—perhaps a metaphor for continuity, memory, or the passage of time.

Above the land, the sky is a deep navy or indigo, dotted with gray, stylized clouds that drift in soft, rounded forms. A crescent moon, placed near the center of the sky, lends the scene a gentle luminosity, evoking a sense of peace and introspection. Birds in mid-flight appear throughout the composition, rendered with the same stylized approach as the other elements. Their presence introduces a sense of movement and freedom, subtly animating the otherwise still landscape. Tapan Mitra’s technique embraces bold shapes, simplified outlines, and flattened perspectives, characteristic of folk and illustrative art traditions. Yet, within this simplicity lies a deep emotional resonance, an ability to suggest solitude, harmony, and the quiet beauty of a landscape untouched by time. The painting invites viewers into a contemplative world, where night has fallen gently, and nature continues its silent rhythms under the watchful eye of the moon.