God I
Description
The figure strides forward with the measured confidence of someone who has always known where they are going. One knee is raised, one arm extended, and in the raised hand a trishul reaches upward toward the top edge of the composition, its three prongs curving slightly as though the implement itself is alive. Serpentine forms coil at the staff's midpoint and again near its base, their bodies rendered in loose, fluid line against the otherwise dense and constructed surface of the figure. A third eye marks the centre of the brow. The face is direct, mouth slightly open, bearing the expression of a presence that is neither threatening nor entirely benign but simply and completely itself.
Every surface of the body is a different texture. The torso is built from close stippled dotwork, the garment from overlapping leaf and scale forms, the musculature of the shoulders from smooth rounded hatching that catches the light differently from every angle. A beaded necklace and belt of circular ornaments circle the body, each bead individually placed. Beneath the figure, the ground is not ground at all but an entire garden of flowers, each blossom rendered with its own petals and centre, the whole bed of them spreading across the lower portion of the composition like an offering laid out in advance of arrival. Suresh Dhurve works in the Gond tradition of Madhya Pradesh, where divine figures are not illustrations of mythology but encounters with it. The marks he uses, stipple, hatch, scale, petal, are not stylistic choices but a visual theology, a way of saying that the sacred is made of the same material as the world and is no less detailed, no less particular, no less alive. Painted in acrylic on paper, this work holds the full weight of that understanding.
Why This Artwork Stands Out
The trishul and third eye situate the figure within recognisable devotional iconography while the Gond visual language transforms familiar symbol into something entirely new. The floral base, rendered with individual attention to each bloom, elevates the ground itself into an act of reverence, making the earth beneath the figure as sacred as the figure above it. The range of textures across a single monochromatic palette, stipple, hatch, scale, petal, demonstrates a mastery of mark-making that rewards close and extended looking. Suresh Dhurve's ability to hold devotional intensity and intricate craft in the same image gives this work a rare quality of presence that is felt before it is understood.