This encounter with Gopal Ghose’s work was not merely about what was seen, but about how it was seen. The recent exhibition, Views Reborn in Frames, held at Gallery Chitralekha as part of the Debovasha Ramkinkar Festival, offered a rare glimpse into the inner workings of a keen obser­ver — not through his most iconic images, but through fleeting impressions, preparatory sketches, and diary-like marks. These weren’t finished declarations, but visual thoughts caught mid-air.

Three paintings reminded viewers of the Ghose we know: luminous landscapes, sometimes punctuated by a distant figure, coloured fields vibrating with a quiet intensity. But most of the works — chiefly sketches — drew from a different register: more private, more searching.

A small monochrome ink drawing presents a landscape where hills and trees rest along the distant horizon. At the same time, the foreground, at first appearing as undulating land, gradually begins to resemble waves. The earth seems to soften into water, as Ghose’s fluid lines dissolve the boundary between terrain and current. A similar metamorphosis unfolds in a minimal watercolour: abstract waves occupy the lower
half, while birds — drawn in the most economical of strokes — float above. Although spatially apart, the two elements mirror each other in rhythm.

An artwork by Gopal Ghose. Debovasha

The show also featured a series of crowd scenes — one particularly striking sketch depicts a political gathering where the figure in the foreground is rendered with relative clarity while those nearer the stage dissolve into almost abstract marks. It isn’t reportage, but distillation: a moment pared down to its visual essence, suspended between memory and perception.

In these works, Ghose didn’t showcase mastery — he revealed vulnerability. His lines stammer, his compositions remain open, and his forms shift shape. But it is precisely in this uncertainty that his art breathes.

To see Ghose this way was to be reminded that drawing is not merely a form of depiction. It is a form of listening, of thinking aloud — with the hand, the eye, and the irrepressible tremor of attention.