Pandit Bhila Khairnar: Light-winged Smoke

“That moment in the evening, when dusk begins to set and the cattle comes home raising dust in its wake, is magical...it gets light to dark as the dust gently blots out the sun, there a gentle breeze in the air and all fatigue disappears!” -Pandit Bhila Khairnar

Warm-hued tones, akin to a glowing mist, drift within Pandit Bhila Khairnar's sombre canvases are currently on show at Volte Gallery. Hailing from a modest farming background from Nasik, the artist describes his memories spent in idyllic fields and attempts to recapture that point between twilight and dusk when the light changes in a few seconds and the open sky is a hue of myriad colours, intangible and mystic.

Living and extending his art practice in the city over the last two decades (his first show being in 1992), Khairnar treats his canvases as two-dimensional fields where colour and light can shift in space and time. Using industrial brushes, on a super flat surface, the artist lays on different shades of colour building up to sixteen layers resulting in a subtle play between light and dark, shadow and smoke. “Light-winged Smoke” is in fact the title of a poem by Henry David Thoreau which unwittingly encapsulates Pandit Bhila Khairnar's sentiments in words.

Citing V.S Gaitonde and Prabhakar Barve as his prime influences, Khairnar is a pure abstractionist who has dissolved the traditional points of figuration and composition, thereby deconstructing such elements to concentrate on the act of painting itself. His art practice solely and unapologetically concentrates on the aesthetics of colour, light and unconscious form.

The title for his show is inspired by a poem by Henry David Thoreau which fittingly describes in sensuous words what Pandit attempts to capture on canvas. We also hosted a very special opening pairing the exhibition with a classical Dhrupad recitation performed by Uday Bhawalkar.