Artist Shivakumar Sunagar captures unknown landscapes in solo show

The Spirit of the Land, a solo show by artist Shivakumar Sunagar, is a vista of Nature-inspired emotions

Cloud kissed skies, gently flowing streams, swathes of green over hill and plain, waves splashing against the rocks. The sights, sounds and scents of the landscapes Shivakumar Sunagar has presented in The Spirit of the Land stir nostalgia and evoke a wanderlust for the yet unseen.

“The places on my canvases are not exact depictions; they are inspired by my travels,” says Shivakumar. The artist who paints from memory without sketching on location, adds there are elements of the imaginary and emotional in them as well.

The works on display comprising acrylic on canvas and watercolour on paper have been executed over the past year, and the artist says they were created from the emotions evoked by the places he visited. “You paint a tree and it looks real enough, but the image also depicts the rush of the feelings I had both when I saw the tree and when I began recreating it.”

“Emotions are heavy and layered, and often one falls short of words when describing the depth of intense feeling. This is why in my work, there is a presence of abstractions in the realistic. You cannot explain an abstract in words; it is what one feels,“ he says.

Shivakumar Sunagar | Photo Credit: Special Arrangement

Shivakumar, who makes it a point to paint a piece every day, says he commits the lights and sounds of a place to memory and later, adds his own composition of colours and creativity to a piece.