Paresh Maity’s Luminous Terrains explores light and landscape in art

At a time when conversations around art are increasingly shaped by spectacle, scale, and the urgency of newness, artist Paresh Maity turns toward something older and steadier: the landscape. 

His latest exhibition, Luminous Terrains,presented by Art Alive Gallery, is currently on view at the Center for Contemporary Art (CCA) in Delhi’s Bikaner House. It gathers impressions from across geographies — from the Dal Lake in Kashmir to the French Riviera— yet feels less like a travelogue and more like an inward return. 

For Paresh, this is not a new preoccupation but a homecoming. “More than five decades ago, when I decided to pursue art, I was painting only landscapes,” he reflects. “Even as a child, I was drawn to them instinctively, because they were about Nature. And for me, Nature is life itself.”

Kashmir
| Photo Credit:
Special Arrangement

Returning to light

If this exhibition marks a renewed engagement with terrain, it also extends a longstanding conversation with light — a thread that ran through his earlier exhibition Infinite Light in 2022. But where that body of work traversed abstraction and figuration, here the expression unfolds entirely through the land.

The paintings are expansive and often meditative. They do not attempt to document but to evoke something that echoes the philosophical lineage Paresh acknowledges, recalling Aristotle’s observation that art imitates Nature. Yet imitation here is less about replication and more about resonance.

Landscapes as memory

From the ghats of Varanasi to the shifting waters of Venice, Paresh’s works often feel like visual diaries — though he resists the idea that they are painted from direct observation alone.

Artist Paresh Maity
| Photo Credit:
Special Arrangement

“When I travel, I sketch constantly. Sometimes I even paint on the spot,” he says. “But later, in the studio, I don’t rely on photographs or even my earlier sketches. The experience stays in my mind. The light, the emotion, the feeling of the place resurface naturally.”

Revisiting places becomes less about geography and more about time. Returning to Srinagar, for instance, is not an act of repetition but rediscovery, says Paresh. 

“The landscape may be the same, but the experience is never the same,” he notes. “Time changes, light changes, and along with that, I too change.”

Winter in Dal Lake
| Photo Credit:
Special Arrangement

The character of place

For Paresh, each region carries its own visual language. The rugged earthiness of Madhya Pradesh, with its burnt sienna tones and sharp light, contrasts with the softer openness of Rajasthan, where mustard fields glow and desert light diffuses across sand and scrub.

In Venice, he finds lyricism; in southern France, there is radiance that once drew impressionists, all of whom sought to capture fleeting light.

“We are a country of light,” Paresh says. “Everywhere you travel in India, there is a powerful radiance in the landscape. The desire to capture that fleeting moment is central to painting.”

Colour, medium, and intuition

The sacred confluence
| Photo Credit:
Special Arrangement

His approach to colour is a blend of observation and instinct. Paresh laughs, “For me, painting is like preparing a good curry. Everything has to come together — the spices, the hand that stirs it, and the intention behind it.”

This layered sensibility informs his choice of medium as well. The exhibition brings together oils, acrylics, watercolours, and drawings, each responding to different emotional registers of light.

“Sometimes watercolour feels most honest, especially when I want to capture early morning mist,” he explains. “At other times, oil and acrylic offer strength. They allow me to build intensity and scale.”

Despite being shaped by travel, his works are suffused with stillness, though Paresh is quick to point out that stillness does not mean inertia.

Winter blooming
| Photo Credit:
Special Arrangement

“A canvas may not physically move, yet it carries an inner vibration,” he says. “When someone stands before my work, I want the painting to speak quietly, to stir something within them.”

A shared journey

The exhibition also coincides with the silver jubilee of Art Alive Gallery, with whom Maity has shared a 25-year association.

“The relationship between a gallery and an artist is always a two-way journey,” he reflects. “My responsibility is to create with honesty. The gallery helps the work reach the audience.”

Varanasi
| Photo Credit:
Special Arrangement

In Luminous Terrains, that journey — across places, memories, and light — feels less like a culmination and more like an ongoing conversation with the world outside and within. 

The exhibition is on until March 10 from Monday to Saturday, 11am to 7pm at Center for Contemporary Art (CCA), Bikaner House, New Delhi

Published – March 05, 2026 06:21 pm IST