Untitled (Bird, Tree and Mountain Series)

In this painting, Swaminathan uses colour and archetypal forms as means of representing an introspective, universal reality. "To understand colour as harmony was to limit oneself to look at it as representation, be it in terms of nature association or representation. [...] Here all the rules of tonalities, of harmonies, of warm and cool colour broke down. Thus primary colours could be used to achieve an inward growing, meditative space [...] The introduction of representational forms in the context of colour geometry gave birth to psycho-symbolic connotations. Thus a mountain, a tree, a flower, a bird, a stone were not just objects or parts of a landscape but were manifestations of the universal." (Artist Statement, 'Modern Indian Art: the Visible and The Possible', Lalit Kala Contemporary 40, New Delhi, 1995, p. 49)

This painting exemplifies Swaminathan's pictorial dichotomisation of reality and illusion in its existence between naturalism and abstraction. The artist used the term 'numinous image', borrowed from Philip Rawson to speak about the 'para-natural' -- the magical and mysterious essence of things -- that is ever-present yet unavailable to the senses. Using his iconic, stylised signifiers of bird and tree, Swaminathan conjures a two dimensional cosmos that is both meditative and metaphorical. As if bewitched, the birds hover upside down below the otherworldly tree line, neither in flight nor at rest. This world transcends time and space, inducing the meditative stillness that became the artist's obsession.