Exhibiting currently at the gallery 4 of Jahengir Art Gallery, is the latest works by Santosh R. Patil. Meeting the artist amidst his larger than life artworks gave a great insight on his inspirations and humble beginnings. Coming from a poor farmer family with bare resources, his journey to his solo art exhibition in Mumbai is full of struggles.

His paintings are large scale and he confesses, that he struggles working on smaller spaces. There seems to be an energetic movement and dynamism in the dark coloured lines in the paintings, pointing intentionally towards the desired movement. They appear to vary in texture because of the medium being oil paints, as well as by the artist’s intention to interest the viewer’s eye.

• 

• 

The subject in Most of his paintings are animals and birds, even if there is a human figure it is surrounded by animals. Santosh makes use of invented textures which refers to that made by the artist and is nothing like what is seen in nature: the artist’s take on the subject. It is a result of the artist’s imagination and might look abstract. There appears to be spatial confusion due to the cramming of the composition and explosive textures. His colour scheme is mostly earthy, lending prominence to blue and ochre yellow. He has used a wide spectrum of colours in the background, effectively contrasting warm colours with cool. Overlapping colours are particularly apparent in the following combinations: yellow and blue, pink and blue.

• 

• 

Interestingly few of his works have nudes juxtaposed with bull or horse representing a male and a female according to him but in these paintings, the nudes are taking the focal point mainly because of their placement in the foreground.

Santosh Kumar artworks are abstract to a great extent, the paintings simplifies the subject to its basic essence, removing superfluous details. A talented artist with a promising future to look out for.