The Year of The Image-Maker
Triveni Gallery, New Delhi
... and it is often a simple image, like that of Animesh Roy’s ‘The Fall’ that I saw at Triveni Gallery, that perseveres, as it bridges the gap between matter and ideas, between texture, line and images, and leaves one with a feeling that one has experienced something that reminds one that ultimately it is not people who are immortal, their actions are.
Suneet Chopra
The Hindustan Times, New Delhi. July 30, 1994

Exploring The Medium
M.E.C. Art Gallery, New Delhi
Over the past two decades acrylic, the aqueous medium, has lent itself to a wide range of use by painters, often replacing the oil. The transparent watercolour is not pliable for the slap-dab, thick impasto technique, nor is the opaque gouache, another aqueous medium, capable of retaining the kind of thickness the painters want for speedy gestural brushwork. The varying thickness of acrylic paint can create a lively pattern of surface tension parallel to colours and their varying values. It looks very much like the oil paint, only much cheaper. Some painters can achieve highly consistent and uniform colour filed with acrylic, which is not that easy in transparent watercolour, and gouache will often leave marks of the brush bristle. That is another extreme of the use of acrylic colours.
The 40 medium-small size acrylic landscapes of Animesh Roy, now on view at the M.E.C. Art Gallery, Khan Market, show the young painter’s control over the medium, and his profound concern for the effects of light on nature. He has titled the present series — his first solo show in the Capital — ‘On the Roads’, and most of the landscapes were painted on location: The deep woodlands, the forest path lighted up by the sunlight seeping through the leaves of tall trees, the dramatic diagonals of dipping slope sheltering a few wild flowers, the rough stone boulders, and sometimes little towns on mountain tops. Animesh brings in lively linear patterns of light, which also define the undulating topography of the land, with the butt-end of the brush, displacing the thick layer of paints — a very familiar technique even with artists who paint in transparent watercolour or in oil.
What is important in the landscapes is the total avoidance of any photographic references which we often note with dismay even in paintings of highly rated watercolourists. He paints with a breezy brush, loaded with thick paint catching the ephemeral poetry of colour and light through changing seasons in the woodlands. And he varies the direction of the brush, sometimes in quick diagonals which mix grey, blue and black only to throw up the fleeting colours of wild flowers in hasty horizontals making the landscape almost semi-abstract. Evidently he is still exploring the pictorial poetry of the inspired impressionists. But in some paintings, for instance, the ‘Red Road’ and ‘Sunlit Path’, his treatment of colours shows the early expressionist painters’ mystic awareness of colours which often sent out to them signals of deeper psychological import. Strangely, when he paints the familiar geometry of small towns, Animesh seems to be rather heavy-handed, if not ham-handed, in wielding his brush and his perception of colours suddenly focuses on the drab and the insipid.
Santo Datta
The Hindu, New Delhi. October 5, 1992


By using acrylics straight from the jar without dilution, Animesh Roy (MEC Gallery) gets the thick impasto effect of oils and he has painted some delightful woodlands scenes, the foreground trees in clear detail, the background a warm flush of colours.
Krishna Chaitanya
The Hindustan Times, New Delhi. October 11, 1992

Animesh Roy is plucky. He travels, and transcribes the visited places on paper or canvas, in acrylic. Since these works still lean on nature in a big way, they are essentially descriptive. But as descriptions they stand well. Thus ‘Dark and Deep, Autumnal Woods’ (inspired by Robert Frost) as also the works suffused with pollen yellow. A good beginning, the artist should now muse on the types of landscape there may be.
Keshav Malik
The Times of India, New Delhi. October 22, 1992

Evocative Acrylics on Paper
Animesh Roy’s acrylics on oil sheets and canvas on view at MEC art gallery, evince interest for the young artist’s vertical, horizontal and diagonal approaches to composition. He is able to capture the essential inclinations of the character and terrain of landscape, to highlight its structural rhythms in an integrated combine of woods and rocks, harmoniously blending with scattered flourishes of flowers as though arranged by nature’s own impeccable moves. The work is marked by a sense of exploration as much as by revelation, which is indicated by suddenness of the find.
Animesh has a very sensitive soul and an eye for the soulful in nature, even if it is only pretty. The roadside finds are small little treasure troves that suddenly captivate the eye as you turn the bend in a hill road, opening out new and everchanging amplitudes of valleys, the down-going dimensions of declivities. Since, in all his compositions, he has remained near the road, there have been no stirrings of the mysterious, the sombre and the elevating. What he captures is the scale of the inner amplitudes and nature’s own method of setting off one colour against the other.
Quite often there is an effort to create texture, particularly where the brush leaves its own mark on the paper. The tempering of colours — greens, yellows and oranges with blues — competently generate a specific mood. Collective rhythms capture his heart as much as dignified individual gestures: the joy of a flower enjoying its lone splendour, its true being in the wider spaces to which it relates without difficulty. In works such as these, one notices the first intimations of metaphoric content of poetical quality. His works hold promise.
K.L. Kaul
The Statesman, New Delhi. October 21,1992

Study In Contrasts
Thematic realism, coupled with an imaginative treatment, dominate Animesh Roy’s paintings.
His work is a world of contrasts woven around the juxtaposition of warm earth colours, cool dark colours, of sharp light and shade, of movement versus stillness, violence versus serenity.
The charm of his paintings lies in not aiming at capturing the grave profoundity of life. His paintings have the allure of a somewhat star portrayal.
‘Autumnal Woods I’ and ‘II’ are a study of light and shade. The white and brown tree trunks with their dark green foliage make an effective foil for the lemon yellow fore-ground interspersed with orange. The effect created is not that of soft, dappled light filtering through the trees but the dazzling light of a clear day.
These are Animesh’s more effective impressionist works. It is to the artist’s credit that he has handled such strong colours so sensitively that the contrasts never turn into conflict.
The hectic energy witnessed in these paintings is missing in the ‘Tropical Bird Flower’ whose lush greens build up an atmosphere of tranquility, and a moist cool fecundity.
‘Lane I’ and ‘II’ are the depiction of the same composition in two modes that the artist has created through the use of two different treatments. Both are a portrayal of semi urban life of a road passing through red roofed houses. The focus on the lane is emphasised by the two figures walking on it.
‘Lane I’ has a rather deserted lonely look of cool dusk about it through the use of darker colours and lengthening shadow painted with even, soft brushstrokes while ‘Lane II’ uses thick coats of uneven strikes — vibrant colours bursting with vitality and energy.
Crimson and pink break through the green and brown undergrowth around the small stream in ‘Brook II’. The judicious use of otherwise overpowering colours like crimson, by the artist, relieves the oppresive gloom of the thick growth.
Animesh utilises oil colour technique to produce watercolour effects with acrylic colours in the waterfall.
The vividness of the artist’s palette emerges again in the ‘Yellow Wood’, a study in yellow, green and orange of fiery light permeating through the whole forest, reminiscent of unrelenting summer months of baked earth, dry leaves and blinding sun.
The road path is an idiom that is repeated throughout the selection on display as in ‘In the Woods’, ‘Untrodden Path’ and the ‘Red Road’. In the latter, the artist has tried to reduce the composition to two images painted with minimal brush work though not lacking in colour. The concept of the painting is interesting in its simplicity.
Animesh has shown amazing maturity in his treatment and imaginative conception. He has stuck to a simple but effective compositional structure using colour for balance.
The highlight of his work is the skill with which he has used texture to create the environment, using uneven strokes with thick colours for the creating contrasts and movement, a technique specially useful in acrylic, his chosen medium. He has reserved gentle brushwork for very few of his works that emphasise repose.
The young artist shows a lot of promise in the treatment of uncomplicated themes, infusing them with energy and movement.
Seema Bawa
The Pioneer, New Delhi. July 30, 1992


Lost In The Green Countryside
Very many factors have gone into making the young artist feel so strongly about nature. In nature he is as much attracted to the awe it evokes as to the peace it provides. A raging thunderstorm is as attractive as the quiet that follows. And this is what is effectively conveyed here in acrylics on canvas and oil sheets.
An exhibition of paintings by Animesh Roy was recently put up at the Capital’s MEC gallery. Called ‘On the Roads’ it consisted of some 40-odd works which the artist accomplished in the last three years while travelling through the countryside. Roy is a painter in mind and a poet at heart. Lot many of his works here are influenced in theme and titles by poetry in English.
‘Autumnal Leaves I’ is a fine work. Here nature is in fury. The raging storm is uprooting the smaller of the trees while the larger ones are just about able to withstand the impact. This is brought about by casual and thick strokes of dark brown, yellow and green. In contrast is another beautiful work ‘Lost in the Green I’ wherein nature has laid out a carpet of green all over, with a few small white flowers twinkling in between.
These small white flowers are a favourite of Roy’s and he has put these to good use, particularly in ‘Left Blooming Alone’ series and ‘In Between’. Occasionally the white flowers are replaced by orange ones, to an equal delight.
‘The Pathless Woods’ is the heart of a jungle. Blue sky yonder, with shrubs to the front and a few trees being gently ruffled by the blowing wind. Except for the irritant of a few red spots the picture captures the essence of the wild wood. The shades of green and brown are very effectively used.
‘Lane I’ and ‘II’ are deviations from the rest of the works here but are interesting compositions. The impression is that of an uphill countryside, quite desolate. The focus on the lane (I) is brought out by two figures walking on it and what seem to be deserted houses alongside. There is an eerie quiet about the place brought out by contrasting colours and lengthening shadows.
Roy’s works are marked by a definite spontaneity; an impulsiveness, which probably explains his choice of medium — acrylic. He finds oil tedious. Besides he’s essentially an outdoor artist — most at home when out of home. With acrylic you just ‘dip in and splash’, he says. This was his first solo show and one looks forward to more.
Shekhar Mehra
New Delhi Sunday, Herald, New Delhi. October 18, 1992...