My Compelling Story

Hari Sadhan Dey is a professional painter based out of the capital city of West Bengal, Kolkata. As a young boy of an interior village, Hari used to draw the colourful open-air drama of his seaside village at Kakdwip, West Bengal. Religious and social rituals, shrines of a village, the gathering of famous Gangasagar Mela casted a spell on him. Hari has travelled a long way since his student life with a genuine effort to capture the essence of life in common people and was fascinated by the beauty of Indian traditions, nature, and culture in an unadulterated mode. Thus, he experienced life in its beauty and myriad form. The chiaroscuro of human form, nature, emotion, expression, nostalgic images and feelings of old Calcutta have always inspired him and taken an important place in his paintings, on which he is working continuously. In art, the visually perceived world can bring out the idea or the inner image of the figure, carried beyond the ordinary vision. The physical reflection of one’s inner self is reflected through the face. So the face with different expressions like tranquillity, peace and innocence is always a great source of inspiration for his paintings. Also, the influence of traditional Indian aesthetic, colour, and reflection of Hindu spiritual thought inspired him. He likes to work with themes close to the masses in rural and folk societies. His paintings are not situational narrative ones but are steeped in his own visual language and transferred directly onto his canvas. The technique and detailed process of his paintings have desired possibilities to offer a spiritual thought, aesthetic pleasure, and a searing sensation about his own land to its viewer. In relation to the increasing impact of Western civilisation on our culture, his work suggests love for tradition and rediscovering our own roots.