Excavation

A textured mixed-media abstract in ochre, rust and bone, with jute and mesh worked into the surface. Original on canvas, signed, framed and ready to hang.

The canvas is divided into three horizontal bands, like ground cut open and read from the side.

The upper third is pale — bone and off-white, laid on thick and left rough. Across the middle runs a raised seam of jute and torn hessian, ochre and dark brown, pushed forward off the surface so it casts its own shadow under a raking light. Below it sits a patch of coarse mesh soaked in rust colour and a fragment of gold leaf. The lower third is a solid mass of deep umber, flat and heavy, holding everything above it in place.

This is a piece that has to be seen in person to be understood. The materials are physically built up on the canvas rather than painted onto it — woven fibre, netting, torn cloth and metallic leaf embedded in the medium, then worked over with pigment. Light falling across it from the side changes it completely through the day. A photograph flattens it, and a print cannot reproduce it at all.

The palette is entirely earth: ochre, rust, umber, bone and gold. Nothing cool in it anywhere. That makes it unusually easy to place — it sits naturally against cane, teak, jute, terracotta and lime plaster, which is to say against most contemporary Indian interiors.

There is no subject. The bands read as geology, or as a wall that has weathered, or as nothing at all. The interest is in the surface, and the surface rewards standing close.

Original mixed media on canvas, signed by the artist. Supplied in a floating frame, ready to hang, with a certificate of authenticity. One of a kind — no reproductions of this work are sold.

Specifications
Medium: Mixed media on canvas — acrylic color, jute, mesh, gold leaf, pigment
Type: Original, one of a kindSize: 60 × 90 cm (unframed)
Orientation: Vertical (Portrait)
Signed: Yes, by Aditya Kumar
Ships: Framed with painting in a protective box
Dispatch: 3–5 working days with tracking