Desire

Artist Statement

Life is a journey from womb to tomb. During this journey, man is in constant search of the infinite with his finite possibilities. The material aspects of life, like desire, ambition, yearning for name and fame, pull him constantly down to the earth. Yet the search continues. Search for what?

It is the search for what can at least partly be attained, being detached from all the material aspects. That is why human being figures in most of my paintings. On one hand, man tries to maintain his existence by sticking to material aspects of life. On the other hand, he ignores his mere physical existence only to attain something beyond his material longings. He tries to tear asunder the hard realities of life. He begins to dream—the kind of dream that tries to touch the infinite. The color of man’s dream is blue. Dream tries to get to the sky, which is infinite, vast, and immense. That which is infinite and immense expresses itself in blue. So, the color blue and the infinite get merged into one cosmic hue—that is blue.

The moon in some of my paintings is suggestive of the personification of dream, hope, etc. And the triangular shape expresses the heart’s ascension. Herein lies the co-existence of dream and heart. The reality of life—simply because the human heart is the accouchement of dream, but dream feels drawn towards the infinite against the heart’s gravitation.

Pradip Kumar Sau is from Kolkata, West Bengali. A figurative, semi-realism painter, Sau holds a master of visual art from Rabindra Bharati University. He has had solo exhibitions at Art Folio Gallery, Chandigarh, Triveni Art Gallery, New Delhi, Art Gallery, Hydrabad, and Karnataka Chitrakala Parishath, Bangalore. His group shows include showings at Birla Academy of Art & Culture, Gallary Syngouge Art Gallery, Kochi, Chola Sheraton, Chennai, Jegangir Art Gallery, Mumbai, Lokayata Art Gallery, New Dehli, and in high profile annual art shows in India and abroad. One such show was Biennial 2013 at Rochester Museum in New Hampshire. Other shows have been seen in Boston, New York, and at Art International by Boxheart Art Gallery in Pittsburg.