Through the centuries, the core of art has been personal reflection. "Art is life, and life is art," says artist Paresh Maity who believes that one can convert “anything and everything” into a work of art and in any medium.
Maity’s solo exhibition, ‘Luminous Terrains’ is open for visitors at Bikaner House till today. The show brings together a series of oils, acrylics, and drawings that capture landscapes from across the world—from the serene waters of Dal Lake in Srinagar, the ghats of Varanasi, the Venetian lagoons, the French Riviera, the deserts of Rajasthan, and the rugged terrain of Madhya Pradesh.
Talking about how his practice and style have changed over the five decades, he says that it all happened very spontaneously. "When I started out at the age of seven, I used to do little watercolours and sketches, and landscapes. But the use of light and shadows is now more intentional in my work," he says.
Maity travels all over the world and, in the manner of impressionists, sits on site to paint what he sees. He says he absorbs a place before applying his creativity to capture it. “I try to expose the inner sense and inner glow of a place and its beauty through my art,” says Maity, underlying the philosophy that underpins his work.
For him, art is ultimately about sharing joy. “And that can be in any form,” he says. His colours are full of vibrance—deep reds and autumnal yellows.
Maity’s works often draw from landscapes and cultural spaces such as Kashmir and Varanasi—places layered with history, emotion and lived experience “Art is socio-economic and political,” he says, acknowledging that emotions and political realities often intersect within artistic expression. “There are emotions and politics involved in it,” he notes, suggesting that the environment in which an artist lives inevitably influences his/her work.
The exhibition launched a book that Maity considers an equally important part of the project. “The exhibition will finish on March 10, but the book will stay forever,” he says. According to him, documentation ensures that the work outlives the exhibition itself. “That will be the legacy for anybody and everybody to see it in a library or in their house and understand what this exhibition and the history was all about. Books are very important for documentation.”
Maity also reflects on the growing presence of digital tools and artificial intelligence in creative fields. When asked if his work would be converted via AI like the recent Ghibli studio-style art or the Mario Miranda AI art, he says that AI can never do what an artist can – feel an emotion.
While acknowledging that technology can assist artists, he does not see it as a replacement for human creativity. “Digitalisation or AI is a tool,” he says, "but it cannot create the deepest emotion, the feeling of love.”
For Maity, each painting represents years of lived experience. “Every painting in this exhibition is different,” he says, emphasising that artistic expression emerges from a lifetime of journeys and observations.