Paramjit Singh

Paramjit Singh could be described as India's leading landscape painter in the Impressionist mode. Paramjit grew up in Punjab, known for its lush fields of wheat and mustard. Love of nature came to him naturally. It was his chance discovery of a small landscape painting, by the poet Rabindranath Tagore, in his father's library at the age of 13, that inspired Paramjit to become a landscape painter. While initial inspiration came from Tagore, it was from Sailoz Mookherjea, the seminal artist of Delhi in the Fifties that Paramjit learnt to observe nature intimately. Sailoz taught the young painter to look not merely at the outer reality of nature but the pulsating rhythm within. With the help of the Impressionist technique of handling light and the Expressionist mode of handling colours, Paramjit has, over the years, created his own unique vision and style. With a brush loaded with pigments and with short brisk strokes, Paramjit creates in his paintings what painter Gulammohammed Sheikh had once described as 'visual hypnotism'. He urges viewers to become a part of the landscape depicted. In one of his recent interviews, Paramjit stated that like the Impresionist painters 'I, also, am a painter of light. For me the starting point is the physical elements of a landscape. From it I derive the inspiration to handle pigments in a way one handles language to give expression to one's subtlest thoughts and fanciful feelings. My use of pigments gives them, I feel, a tactile quality. The flexibility of the technique I employ allows me to decipher ever-changing meaning in the wave on the water or the wind that rustles the grass.'

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