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Ram Kumar finds the perfect middle ground between the representational landscape and the abstracted one, with room for rumination. The present lot is created through the layered application of earth tones on canvas to reveal the rocky landscape found within nature. Hints of cooler tones underneath warmer ones suggest Kumar's devotion to revealing the reality of these spaces for reflection. When speaking of his process, Ram Kumar has stated,... Ram Kumar finds the perfect middle ground between the representational landscape and the abstracted one, with room for rumination. The present lot is created through the layered application of earth tones on canvas to reveal the rocky landscape found within nature. Hints of cooler tones underneath warmer ones suggest Kumar's devotion to revealing the reality of these spaces for reflection. When speaking of his process, Ram Kumar has stated, "There is an enigmatic mystery about the inner life of a colour applied on canvas. It stands out by itself in the beginning but slowly it starts building up relationships with other areas, other colours, and forms. This continues. There is a pause, a silence, an accident and in the end some sort of harmony." (Gagan Gill ed., Ram Kumar: A Journey Within, New Delhi: Vadehra Art Gallery, 1996, p. 202) The present lot embodies Kumar's talent for taking apart a landscape and then putting it back together in a way where the tones of colour create a discourse which inspires both memory and emotion.

Moved by the setting and landscapes he encountered on a trip to Banaras in the 1960s, Kumar abandoned his previously figurative paintings. He embarked on a new direction in his oeuvre, in an attempt to express the emotions evoked by landscapes. His abstract landscapes capture the true essence of place without the use of overt symbolism. Richard Bartholomew has stated, "Whenever I see a Ram Kumar painting, and a landscape, I get the feeling that I've been there before. The manner in which memory functions through deliberate recall and association. The very forms of composition suggest that. The hard and soft, the tangible and the elusive, the structure and sensation. The structure of what lies before the eyes and the sensation of what lies behind. This is the link between the painter's self and our own." (Gill, p. 124)

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