Oil · Gold leaf · 2018-2020Kashi — Main Panel
Gold leaf catching light like ghats at dawn; oil glazes of ash, flowers and prayer.
Kashi
Oil · Gold leaf on canvas · 2018-2020 — city of light, death and liberation.
Oil · Gold leaf · 2018-2020
Oil · Gold leaf · 2018-2020Kashi 2
Dawn fog over the river in ochre, vermilion and twilight blue; a single step, lamp and bone-smoke.
Oil · Gold leaf · 2018-2020Kashi 3
Sacred geography between darkness and first light; monumental and miniature at once.
Oil · Gold leaf · 2018-2020Kashi 4
Layered terrain of ritual and decay; the skyline compressed into a single gesture.
Oil · Gold leaf · 2018-2020Kashi 5
Paintings that incant rather than illustrate; dying as a form of arriving.
Kashi — the city of light, death, and liberation. This series attempts to render the sacred geography of Varanasi not as postcard, but as an abstract, layered terrain of ritual and decay. Gold leaf catches the light like the ghats at dawn; oil glazes suggest the slow accretion of ash, flowers, and prayer.
The works move between the monumental and the miniature — some panels compress the entire skyline into a single gesture, others dwell on a single step, a single lamp, a single bone-smoke rising. The palette is restricted: ochre, vermilion, ash-white, and the blue of the river at twilight.
Kashi asks what it means to depict a city that is also an idea — a place where dying is a form of arriving. The paintings do not illustrate; they incant.