Untitled

Artist: A. P. Santhanaraj
Medium: Acrylic on Paper
Size: 25 × 30 in (63.5 × 76.2 cm)
Year: 1997

Artist’s deep engagement with abstraction while retaining strong references to the lived environment. At first glance, the composition appears to fragment a rural or village landscape into overlapping geometric planes, evoking stylistic affinities with Cubism and its reinterpretation of perspective. Rather than depicting a literal scene, Santhanaraj dissects the landscape into patches of color, textured surfaces, and irregular forms, offering viewers a multi-layered, almost kaleidoscopic vision of place. The palette is central to the work’s atmosphere. Dark, muted greens, greys, and blacks dominate the background, suggesting a dense and grounded topography. These hues establish depth, as if layers of hills, fields, or natural formations recede into the distance. Contrasting with this are sudden bursts of bright yellow, strategically interwoven within the darker colors. These luminous passages introduce vitality and balance, evoking the suggestion of sunlight falling across fields, pathways, or open spaces within the rural setting.

Lighter beige and off-white shapes, dispersed across the composition, appear almost architectural. They can be read as simplified forms of dwellings or village structures, abstracted into flattened geometries. This subtle architectural reference anchors the scene and connects the work to human habitation within the broader landscape. Adding further narrative depth are small figures, painted in red and brown tones. These figures, located toward the bottom right and scattered in other parts of the scene, animate the composition by introducing a sense of scale and human presence. Their modest placement amidst the abstracted environment emphasizes the relationship between people and their surroundings, situating humanity as an integral, though not dominant, part of the landscape.

Santhanaraj’s technique heightens the expressive quality of the work. Variations in paint application, ranging from textured, heavily worked surfaces to thinner, more fluid passages, create a dynamic rhythm across the paper. This layering of textures not only enhances visual interest but also mirrors the complexity of the environment being represented, where natural, built, and human elements intersect.

The painting ultimately resists being read as a literal landscape. Instead, it conveys the experience of landscape, fragmented memories, shifting perspectives, and symbolic presences interwoven into a unified visual field. By blending abstraction with subtle figurative and architectural hints, Santhanaraj constructs a space that is both physical and psychological. Untitled thus exemplifies the artist’s ability to transform ordinary rural imagery into a rich tapestry of color, form, and texture. It embodies a vision of landscape that is at once modernist in its abstraction and deeply rooted in cultural and environmental realities, offering viewers a contemplative exploration of place, memory, and identity.