Kolkata-based artist, Samiran Day, shares his fantastical artwork and talks about the ideas, characteristic forms, and the thought process that make up his art practice.

I acquire my artistic thoughts mainly from my surrounding environment which involves the place where I was born and live.  Society’s atmosphere, sensation, idiomatic expressions, political, economic and corporal realities resonate and have enchanted me from early childhood to the present day.

Humans are the most innovative creation of this world, whose fusion of pleasure, contentment, agony and anxiety is sometimes concealed and sometimes reflected in the narrow passages and highways of the city. I try to bring a rhythmic sensation to represent the daily struggles of commoners, their issues and perspectives.  These realistic and metaphoric forms reside on my canvas.

I have walked along paths of indigence, flown in the sky of liberation, and have surrendered myself with anxiety when all ideas have collapsed. The unscrupulous society, and its yell of fear, has a great impact on me.

The constructed world, with its high rising buildings, has always filled me with anxiety so deeply that I dream of a search for light. This socio-metaphorical reality, with its enchanting and surrealistic behaviour, are reflected on my canvas. I believe that artists’ self-realization and thinking is deliberately emulated in their artworks. My ongoing art practice has a great resonance with my thoughts, characterized by my self-realization that sometimes is charged with surrealistic thinking.

I began working in pen and ink due to a shortage of art materials.  I found that stories began to flow through my pen, mostly in black and white.  I use black to represent the ultimate darkness in a person’s life, whereas white brings hope to the character--showing a light, a way out.  These journeys of existence motivate me.  In my ongoing art practice, I am experimenting with different mediums with the aim of bringing more elegance and transparency to my creations.

Imagination, childhood memories and perception are the main theme of my artwork.  My family and their contrasting lives, from behaviour, daily routines and realities to beliefs, afflictions, friendships and emotions, as well as their green eyes, has always been echoed through my works.

Art, to me, is my inner truth.  Artists are mostly self-obsessed, grasping with their own thoughts physically and metaphorically, signifying their presence through artists strokes. I too have made these alluring gestures on my heavenly journey. Many-a-time, I have preferred my emotions over the inhuman reality which has its presence on my canvas with metaphoric or surrealistic character. I also think that social barriers, with their limitations, is another vision echoing in artistic practice. Uniting the blend of natural beauty and an artist’s eternal verities amalgamates to fulfill an artwork.

About the Artist

Kolkata-based artist Samiran Dey is an accomplished painter whose work has been exhibited throughout India and included in numerous online international exhibitions. He received Certificates of  Merit in Painting and Photography from the Indian College of Art and Draftmanship, where he earned a BFA in Painting.  He went on to study at Rabindra Bharati University and received an MFA in Painting in 2020.