Sandip Roy’s is not just another story of a young painter emerging from humble roots to become one of the most exciting discoveries in recent times, flooded with recognition in the space of a few years.

The young man has a soft approach and thinking mind that are far more remarkable than the trophies and certificates he has taken home. Those qualities are at least partly reflected in his self-confessed weakness for landscapes – the attachment to nature that strikes an emotional chord and takes him from the hills of Kedarnath to the sandy terrains of Digha. But behind the sensitive exterior is a kind of determination that makes an inspiring story of faith in one’s own credentials. Sandip has adopted the medium of water colour after, ironically, being told that his handicap in the medium had stood in the way of his admission into art college. The revelation had left him with a stronger determination to prove that his love for water colour that he had absorbed from looking at the work of Shyamal Dutta Ray, Bikash Bhattacharjee and Ganesh Haloi was a genuine inspiration that he was capable of developing into a delicate handling of transparent colours while exploring the relationship between man and nature.

This is what distinguishes Sandip as a landscape painter. To begin with, he was just the boy from a remote village in Nadia holding his father’s hands on several trips to Amarnath. The feel of the environment was subsequently extended to the hills of Himachal and Kurseong and the ghats of Banaras. Years later, when it came to applying brush to paper after a stint at the College of Visual Arts, Kolkata, it became a matter of looking for that indefinable power that draws man, earth and sky into a symbiotic movement. But there are new forms, new ideas, new colours that flow effortlessly into his canvases, giving his landscapes a simplicity, freshness and flavour that recall the work of J Swaminathan that was a huge inspiration. The colours acquired a spontaneous flow in delicately woven shades and left Sandip’s work with exciting possibilities. He kept playing with blues, yellows, browns and indigos, adding a cerebral touch to what was evident to the naked eye. Confirmation came from the guidance he received from his mentor Ganesh Haloi and a chance encounter with A Ramachandran who heartily approved of his methods, not to speak of the much sought after awards that had already come his way.

Perhaps the most precious of these was the award named after Shyamal Dutta Ray whom he had met barely a few weeks prior to his death. Now after several shows and the response from a stream of visitors to his studio, he earnestly believes that he can create fresh space for himself in the world of landscapes and transparent colours. That does not obliterate the images that confront him inevitably as a painter of his time – an old man walking, children drawing fun out of a hard life, a sick man on the pavement, a woman selling vegetables. It is the inner response to human movements and expressions that stirs Sandip, making him conscious of his time and environment. That is perhaps why we could soon find him exploring figurative ideas in colour schemes that he evolves all by himself. If that recalls the days when he was struggling to find a language of his own, he does not mind confessing that he is still driven by a spiritual power to keep looking for artistic truths. It gives him the energy to move ahead.

Swapan Mullick