Amit Bhar is a Bangalore-based artist whose interest in art began at a young age. In his own words, it was eventually to become “the primary objective of his life”. The pristine, rustic beauty of rural Bengal—of his birthplace, Hooghly-Chinsurah—the clear blue skies, fallen autumn leaves, grazing cattle and the daily life of the village nestled on the banks of the river Hooghly, inspired Bhar to start painting when he was as young as twelve.
He credits noted artist and gold medalist, Shri Paresh Das, as well as Subal Jana and Niloy Ghosh as mentors on his artistic journey, and recalls being inspired by Bikash Bhattacharya and Suhas Roy in his initial years.Bhar’s black and white pieces are often strongly figurative and shaded with careful strokes to build intricate patterns. His vivid-hued oil paintings are delicately composed with careful attention paid to lighting, and he describes them as “…a new semi realistic technique of texturing with the realistic play of light and shade”. In his Buddha series, inspired by Ajanta paintings and Gandhara sculptures, he reinvents traditional imagery in his own unique style; while in his Rajasthan series, his paintings capture the folk spirit of Rajasthan with its musicians and puppets. Traversing the length between realistic and stylised, and occasionally venturing into the abstract, Bhar’s works explore the threshold between illusion and reality, between waking and dreaming.
