Paritosh Pal

Paritosh Pal – Artist and philosopher: A kaleidoscope of memories, influences and inherent talent are some of the strokes of this young artist’s brush with canvas. Born in the tea gardens and forests of Chechakhata near Darjeeling, Paritosh lived close to nature with tribal art an early influence.

Art was clearly a childhood calling. Paritosh’s first childish attempts to draw with chalk stolen from school found the floor of his home a yielding canvas. This may have invited some displeasure from his mother, but later won him a teacher. Bijay Gupta, a man who worked with the Railways, was an accomplished artist. Bijay would often retreat into the jungles to paint and inculcated the same deep love for art in young Paritosh, just beginning to graduate from drawing on the ground with a stick to pencil and paper.

Ganesh Pyne and Paritosh Sen became strong influences much later in college. A diploma in fine art from Rabindra Bharti University was Paritosh’s first prize as a budding artist, accompanied as it was by a dizzying exposure to the host of different artists, sculptors, poets, philosophers and writers that studied, taught and traveled through its campus.

A degree in Philosophy followed, and Paritosh’s intellectual craving to unravel the essence in existence also speaks vividly in his work.

The frequent appearance of the moon in his paintings is symbolic of this quest. The moon silently and powerfully illuminates the often celestial people inhabiting his paintings; goddesses with their third eye open, barely visible among forest trees and doe-eyed swans, holding lotus buds or being pierced by cupid’s arrows. Earthy browns, yellows, greens and black are used with stunning impact with turquoise blue and yellow tones conveying divine love, tranquility and peace.

Unlike most others, Paritosh is aware he is on a journey, both in physical and metaphysical terms, beckoning him towards unknown destinations. He says: ‘Life is a struggle; people are all looking for something good in their life. The moon witnesses this struggles and radiates the healing calm of nature in friendly support.’

Paritosh’s journey is carrying him far away from where he longs to be in his little childhood village to art shows in slick city suburbs. It’s a road less traveled to recognition and fame.

Shreekumar Varma on Paritosh Pal
“Paritosh Pal is a painter of promise. Starkly chiseled faces merge into his earthy colours or rise from them, surprising with their stealthy or startling appearance. His colours are richly muted, earth-brown, earth-green, with the texture of vegetation and growth, but spread innocuously over his canvas like an undergrowth bursting with hidden or emerging life.
I enjoyed his subtlety and his exploration of form. Pal is young enough for experimentation. His canvases are now a process of discovery. Already blessed with a style of his own, he is obviously in transit towards a vivid and lasting personal voice.”