Artist : Dhiren Sasmal
Title : Mermaid (abstract)
Medium : Mixed media on board
Size : 13” x 9.5”
Year : 2010
Born on 2nd January 1953, Dhiren Sasmal has been working steadily for the past forty years as artist, designer and illustrator, his immense talent and mastery over his medium leading him to win awards in every sphere of artistic activity. His paintings can be found in galleries and collections all over the world.
Dhiren Sasmal is a meditative painter, amazing skilful in his linear execution. His works are diverse, his colours and style reflecting the structure of the source. When he works with folktales of Bengal, his paintings reflect the sobriety of Bengal art within his multilayered structural compositions. While working with European themes, his fantasy art takes on an expressionist or surrealist form. He often disintegrates forms, makes them geometrical and then breaks the form, yet this scattering within the pictorial space remains integrated in a totality of formal structure.
The artist believes that a child’s inner world is the world of myth, which in turn has its roots in pre-history. The child’s reality, which always grows out of that myth, contains an entirely different structure from our day-to-day mundane lives. For the artist, this state of innocence is the primary condition of his/her creativity.
Dhiren Sasmal simply uses fables and stories as a point of departure – the style, medium and execution are very much his own – he employs a unique method of layering, where the colours emerge from within and below each layer, with a final ‘wash’ and intricate pen&ink detailing, making each piece a collector’s item