God II
Description
The figure commands the entire surface. Seated and frontal, it regards the viewer with two wide, unblinking eyes set within a face that is more architecture than anatomy, its brows rendered in concentric striped arcs, its cheeks built from interlocking hatched segments that give the face the quality of something carved rather than drawn. On either side of the head, great spiral forms coil outward like horns or shells or the scrolled capitals of a column that predates all columns. The mouth is a dark oval, open, as though mid-utterance, mid-breath, or at the precise moment before speech becomes sound.
The body is assembled from distinct hatched zones, each section given its own direction of mark, so that the torso reads as a series of layered forms fitting together with the logic of natural armour. A coiled serpent or braided rope winds through the lower body and tail, grounding the figure even as the raised hand gestures outward into open space. Behind and around the entire form, a large organic halo of parallel hatching fills the background, its scalloped outer edge soft and cloud-like, holding the figure within a field of energy that feels neither celestial nor terrestrial but somewhere the two overlap. Suresh Dhurve works in the Gond tradition of Madhya Pradesh, a tradition in which divine forms are not depicted from a distance but built from within, mark by mark, until the presence accumulates into something undeniable. Working in acrylic on paper, he brings to this figure the full density and authority of a visual language that has always understood the sacred as something felt in the body before it is seen by the eye.
Why This Artwork Stands Out
The frontal, symmetrical composition gives the figure a totemic authority that is immediate and unambiguous, holding the viewer's attention without movement or narrative. The variety of hatching directions across different zones of the body creates a sophisticated internal structure, making the figure feel genuinely three-dimensional within a monochromatic vocabulary. The coiled form at the lower body introduces a serpentine energy that connects the figure to the deep iconographic roots of the Gond tradition's understanding of divine power. Suresh Dhurve's command of line density and texture allows him to build an image of considerable psychological weight from the most economical of means.