Untitled

Artist: Sohan Qadri
Medium: Mixed Media on Canvas
Size: 8 x 8 inches (20.32 × 20.32 cm)
Year: 1971

Sohan Qadri’s untitled painting a meditative engagement with color, texture, and spatial rhythm. Set against a light beige or cream-colored canvas, the composition is at once minimal and richly expressive. It evokes the quiet power of restraint, allowing a carefully constructed cluster of warm earth tones to emerge as the focal point. Positioned on the right side of the canvas, a dynamic interplay of browns and oranges, from light terracotta to deep umber, dominates the visual field. These shades are built up in tactile, impasto strokes that vary in density and texture. Certain areas carry a grainy, almost sandy surface, while others appear softer, with smoother blending and subtle transitions. This contrast in surface treatment animates the painting, creating a tension between solidity and diffusion. The paint seems not only applied but sculpted, allowing texture to become an expressive language in itself.

The deliberate use of white space around this concentrated area of color accentuates its visual gravity. The surrounding expanse of bare canvas offers the composition a sense of breath, evoking silence or pause, and deepening the contemplative effect of the work. This balance between form and emptiness is a hallmark of Qadri’s visual language, rooted in his meditative practice and Tantric philosophy. Amid the primary palette, faint touches of other hues. Quiet complexity and nuance without disrupting the dominant chromatic harmony. The overall effect is one of stillness charged with energy, a field of silence in which something profound seems to unfold.

Though abstract, the work speaks to ideas of spiritual presence and metaphysical space. The absence of recognizable forms encourages a non-verbal, emotional response, much like a visual mantra. Rather than conveying narrative, the painting asks to be experienced in the present moment, inviting inward reflection. Sohan Qadri’s mastery lies not only in his technical command of mixed media but also in his ability to evoke the intangible. This work, with its subtle materiality and profound simplicity, reflects his lifelong engagement with inner states of consciousness and the sacred geometry of feeling. It is a quiet yet powerful testament to his belief that art can be both meditative object and spiritual offering.