06/06/2026
Vortex Visions: Decoding the Abstract Enigma of Subhra Chand’s Paintings
-Vinay Kumar
Abstraction has always been an essential part of India’s cultural tradition. In music, from the resonance of classical sound to the ineffable, unstruck note, abstraction has long held a rich and enduring place. On the canvas too, where colour matters more than form, artists seek to create everything from the spiritual to the real through colour alone. Here, thought is born from colour, and colour is born from thought. Colour appears not only as something visible but also as image. And image itself is deeply tied to memory. Memory and dream need not always take a tangible form. At times there emerge forms—or formlessnesses—that need not belong to this earth at all. In painting, colour science has its own role. Colour not only binds us to our surroundings, it also gives us energy and awakens our sensibilities. At times, colour itself assumes shape.
In Indian art, this idea of abstraction has been enriched by eminent artists such as Syed Haider Raza, Ram Kumar, Prabhakar Kolte, Ambadas etc. Even after them, several generations in contemporary Indian art have continued this abstract tradition. From this newer generation comes one of the country’s significant artists, Subhra Chand. Through her choice of colours and use of other media, she distinguishes herself from others. Her canvases, abstract in form, combine flora, earth shapes, and gold foil to create a new dimension of sensitivity that draws the viewer in effortlessly. Her paintings lead one from abstraction toward feeling, where they can be connected to one’s own material world.
Syed Haider Raza once said that if he paint green on the canvas, it could mean a forest, a tree or a leaf to him, while to another it might suggest a green sari; in other words, one is free to interpret his green through one’s own imagination. We find the same openness and sensitivity in Subhra’s paintings.
Subhra Chand, who comes from Katni in Madhya Pradesh, carries a cultural background by virtue of her being from a Bengali family. She earned a master’s degree in painting and completed a doctorate on the murals and folk arts of Mandla, Madhya pradesh. During her doctoral research, she encountered the folk motifs of Madhya Pradesh, and their forms and colours deeply affected her.
She developed her art during her years in Madhya Pradesh, but it acquired a new dimension when she came to Delhi.
Her early paintings were spent playing with colour and exploring its possibilities. She did numerous experiments with black or canvas. She tried to reinterpret nature. In these abstract works, forms occasionally begin to emerge.
After entering the mainstream of contemporary art, a certain seriousness appears in her work. In mono and Di-colour compositions, she sought to go beyond the merely visible and reveal truth through sensitivity. During this phase, she also created landscapes of colour, including ariel-view landscapes, as though plotting stories on the canvas. Nature seems to emerge through them.
Her abstract paintings now seem to have found a place to rest. There is greater steadiness in the flow of her colours. Colour too, though still abstract, began to acquire form. She started exploring the layers of the earth and the human body, shaping new idioms through inner feeling and psychological experience. In many of her paintings, one can sense the image of opening aquatic plants. In this way, she creates images. A deep influence of nature is visible in both her large and small canvases.
A subtle transformation comes in her work when she begins creating circular and cubic paintings. The search for the point. The infinite point. At times this resembles a whirlpool. One can almost feel the sound of the whirlpool in her circular works. These paintings convey the vastness of infinity, the desire to move inward into the infinite. In this desire, the treatment of gold foil adds a new dimension: that of spirituality, that of thought.
While participating in the 2016 Bodhgaya Biennale, she experienced a profound sense of an unseen presence near the Bodhi tree. As a result, peepal leaves and gold foil entered the canvas as symbols in her paintings. Her desire to search for the mystery of human feeling through diverse symbols and through gold foil can be felt on the canvas.
Subhra carries out numerous experiments on the canvas, using gold foil, embroidery, thread, and more. Through these experiments and through her vortex vision, she seeks to decode the musical improvisation of her own sensibility unfolding on the canvas. That effort is also an attempt to remain being human.
