Stand close to one of Savya Jain’s paintings, and the surface begins to reveal itself in fragments—marks beneath marks, pigment interrupted by pigment, gestures that seem to have been erased but never quite disappear. Step back and the same work changes character. The details dissolve into an atmospheric field, expansive enough to occupy the peripheral vision. Somewhere between these two distances is where Jain intends the viewer must linger. “I am interested in how a painting changes depending on where the viewer stands,” she says. It is also the idea behind Close | Far – Lean In, Step Back, a group exhibition at Sameksha Gallery, New Delhi.
Jain’s relationship with art began unusually early. She first dabbled with paint when she was barely a year old, a communion that, according to her, sparked a fascination which only grew with time. Later, she studied interior architecture and design, and then visited seminars and took short art courses around the world to develop her vocabulary. It was after taking over the design division of a corporation that she realised where her real ambition lay. She wanted to paint.
What followed was a practice rooted as much in memory and sensation as in the physical act of making. Travel and the natural world feed her imagination, but Jain is less interested in reproducing a landscape than capturing what it leaves behind. A particular light, the colour of the sky, the smell of rain, a change in weather or an emotional response to a place can become the starting point for an abstract work. “I don’t usually begin with the intention of representing a particular memory,” says the 31-year-old artist. “I am more interested in what remains after an experience is over: a colour, a sensation, a fragment, or sometimes simply a shift in how I perceive something.”
That distinction is important. Jain’s paintings are not illustrations of memories; they are closer to their afterlife. The process gives her work its dynamic quality. Her paintings can evoke landscapes without actually depicting them, suggesting skies, terrain, weather or natural forms without settling into recognisable imagery. Colour becomes particularly important—a kind of emotional shorthand through which she explores optimism, hope, belonging and excitement, while leaving enough ambiguity for the viewer to bring their own associations to the work.
The artist rarely begins with a fully resolved image. Instead, she starts with an instinct or a question and lets the painting respond. When asked if there are moments when the painting begins to guide her, she says, “Almost always. I usually begin with an instinct or a question rather than a fully resolved image.” Her influences similarly reflect an interest in perception rather than representation. Ram Kumar has been particularly significant for the openness of his visual language and his refusal to insist upon a single interpretation. “His paintings do not seem to insist on one definitive interpretation,” Jain says. “There is room for the viewer to remain with the work and develop a relationship with it.” The exhibition’s references to Bireswar Sen and Claude Monet further situate Jain within a conversation about atmosphere, scale and the act of seeing. Yet she is less interested in resemblance than in the possibility that a painting can alter according to the amount of time and attention given to it.
And perhaps this is where her interest in nature, memory, architecture and abstraction comes together. A remembered landscape may begin as colour. A feeling may become a texture. A journey may survive as an atmosphere rather than an image. Mixed media allows her to layer these sensations until the painting becomes less a depiction of a place or moment than a physical manifestation of an inner landscape. “For me, a successful painting is not necessarily one that communicates exactly what I intended,” Jain says. “It is one that gives the viewer enough to enter, and enough uncertainty to stay.”