Suhas Bhujbal

"A Quiet Town 100"  oil on canvas  47" x 92"  2011

"A Quiet Town 39"  oil on canvas  50" x 40"  2011

"A Quiet Town 98"  oil on canvas  60" x 72"  2011

"A Quiet Town 97"  oil on canvas  50" x 40"  2011

"A Quiet Town 105"  oil on canvas  42" x 56"  2011

Suhas Bhujbal is an Indian born artist now based in San Francisco. His expressive geometric paintings more often reflect the urban environments of his native country than their American counterparts, although his current home town does make an occasional appearance. But his work is, in general, not about specificity of place. Instead he tries to capture the feel of buildings that grow organically atop one another, overlapping, converging, at times falling apart, at others being revitalized and brightened with bright coats of optimistic color. These are places of dense population, defined by crowds but his careful "quiet" compositions look past the people in order to, in his words, "create harmony out chaos and conflict". That constant tension that exists in cities, and in all human activities, between chaos and order seems at the heart of these carefully balanced paintings. They can be read as near abstractions straddling the fence between formalism and expressionism, or they can be read as narratives; small vignette's of the human experience. You can see many more from his "Quiet Town" series as well as some interesting figurative works on his website: www.suhasbhujbal.com

...and congratulations to the artist on being included in New American Paintings 97 where I came across his work.