Traditional landscapes are generally imbued with a peaceful calmness, tranquillity and serenity; however, in Paris-based artist Rajendra Dhawan’s abstract works this peace is deceptive. There is movement and emotions in his canvases that speak of upheavals that may are not be cataclysmic in scope, yet create a disturbance below the surface.

His canvases are constructed by the use of layering of colours, and this layering results in a melding of muted and subtle tones rather than flat surfaces of primary colours. He paints with a restrained palette, bordering on the ascetic, in terms of number of colours as also controlling the intensity of these colours. The strokes are strong but the effect is soft. Superimposed on these muted layers are one or two lines or strokes in black or a dark colour that create a very passionate overture to the suite of calmness.

His work, as are most artistic creations, are inspired by natural forms, and Dhawan abstracts the hues and structures from nature in his paintings, that seem “the rebirths of nature, an infinite chain made of evolutions”. However, he offers alternate natural forms, a kind of alternate reality, which is real and yet imagined.

Thus, his works balance between referentiality and formless non-referentiality. The compositional divisions of space on the canvas through the skilled use of tones creates a reference to object-image. One may discern a silhouette of a feminine torso, or the torrent of a flowing river or cascading snow of an avalanche, or a forest landscape at twilight. Or one can refrain from reading familiar landscapes into the strokes, viewing the paintings in toto as abstractions of an emotion, a rasa, an essence.

The noted abstract artist Prabhakar Kolte says, “Dhawan and nature follow each other in a pictorial space made of warp (spirit) and weft (matter) that hold peace and simplicity together.” The works evoke synchronic, silent, frozen moments steeped in contemplation and cognition.

— The writer is an art historian, curator and critic