“Cities are like wounds on the earth,” says artist PR Satheesh, speaking about Delhi, where his exhibition ‘The Restless Field’ opens this week. Pointing to the capital’s pollution and environmental stress, he describes the city as a place of constant tension shot through with ecological unease, a theme which runs through his works.
His paintings are about agrarian landscapes, climate uncertainty, and everyday struggle of farmers and the rural life. Born into a farming family in Bisonvalley village in Kerala’s Idukki district, and raised on a cardamom plantation bordering a dense forest, his works have been inspired from the land he has lived with — and depended on.
“Raised in a remote region of Kerala placed me in a close relationship with nature from an early age,” he says. “The landscape was not just a backdrop. It was a living presence that shaped my imagination instinctively.” Unsurprisingly, rural figures, farm animals, and the terrain appear tightly bound to one another, and indistinguishable, in his works. But their forms are unsettled, peculiar, and dense.
Opening at Delhi’s Galerie Mirchandani + Steinruecke, ‘The Restless Field’ (from December 19 to January 24, 2026) is a collection of artworks created over several years by the artist, from 2015 to works done more recently.
Returning to the land
Satheesh has been practising as an artist for over three decades. He graduated from the Government College of Fine Arts in Thiruvananthapuram in 1994 and later received scholarships that allowed him to work in Chennai, Ahmedabad, and Bengaluru. For several years, he worked in different states of India before returning to Kerala. “It was difficult to survive as a freelance artist outside,” he says. “I came back home, set up a small studio, and at the same time helped my family with farming.”
Living among farmers and agricultural labourers brought him closer to the everyday realities of agrarian life—realities he feels are often misunderstood in urban conversations. “Farmers’ issues differ from region to region, and they need to be addressed politically,” he says. “My own approach is more philosophical.”
Satheesh approaches agrarian life through vivid imagery, different moods, and forms. In his works, faces dissolve into fields, bodies blend with animals, and clear boundaries between humans and the environment disappear. “I don’t try to portray their images,” he explains. “I approach the psyche. The boundaries between man and environment dissolve in my work.”
In one of the paintings titled, ‘What You Actually Are Never Dies’, the artist paints a field through thick impasto and a restless blend of deep greens, yellows, reds and whites, evoking memory and a feeling of inner turbulence. Two figures have also been drawn: one seen only from behind, gazing at the other, which nearly dissolves into the surrounding energy. Speaking of these shifting figures in his works, Satheesh says that nothing is fixed. “There is no birth and death,” he tells TMS. “It’s only a transformation … [in the end] only the essence remains.”
Green — a colour associated with fields and meadows — is prominently used in his paintings. Besides reflecting the impact of climate change on crops and the emotional lives of migrant workers and local villagers, the artist says his work is also inspired by the region’s greenery, morning light, and the unhurried landscape.
An uneasy terrain
The exhibition title, ‘The Restless Field’, reflects this state of unease. Satheesh says, “restlessness” is symbolic of environmental unpredictability — changing weather patterns, climate stress, and a growing imbalance between humans and nature. “Climate changes create a highly tense situation everywhere,” he says. “It affects our daily life, and that tension reflects in the images.”
According to the artist, his works are not meant to be comforting or visually easing; many of which are abstract, crowded, and unresolved. “It’s not very optimistic imagery. What we see around us is not always clear or easy to understand. There is always something hidden, something mysterious,” he says.
Satheesh’s process of making a painting is instinctive and impromptu. He begins with a drawing, as the images start to develop slowly. He keeps his sketchbook with him at all times, making studies of landscapes, environments, and forms. “Sometimes you have to destroy the so-called image to find a new way of expression,” he says. “That destruction creates new meanings.”