A painting by Iris Hudson Ghosh

Some paintings do not have to raise their voice to beckon viewers for the privilege of being inspected. Their whispers and murmurs of colours and tones are persuasive enough to draw one. They invite viewers to dig deep under the strata of paint and brushstrokes, which form their placid, quiet surfaces. The viewer, too, is willing to be led, for silent waters run deep.

Iris Hudson Ghosh’s paintings communicate with viewers in a tone that is barely audible, unless one is straining one’s ear to catch the music of her compositions. A limited palette of greys — from charcoal to the lightest of smoky quartz; blues — from cobalt blue to ultramarine; and warmer oranges, topaz and sea green creates melodies that are grave and resonant yet illuminating and warm, like the music of the cello.

Iris, who lives in London but is an annual visitor to Calcutta, was initially involved in vitreous enamel and stained glass and public art. She has widely exhibited abroad and elsewhere in this country. This is the first time she is holding an exhibition in this city.

One does not have to scrutinise Iris’s works to discover the influence of her early training. The interplay of light and shadows, of forms half-revealed, half-concealed, of calligraphic strokes that just about leave their mark, and of quiet bursts of colour are pointers.

Many of her works bear titles and they indicate the mood of her colours. Iris is adept at creating still surfaces where the greys, blues, ochres and oranges segue into one another without any shade dominating over the rest. An arc of red, a crackle of light like the trajectory of shooting stars, and the brilliance of footlights never stand out. They are choreographed to become part of the surface that could remind one of the fanciful smudges of rising damp on walls.

Even when there are wide areas of molten reds and yellows, the music of her colours is never strident. Iris seems to think in subtle modulations of grey. The grey is often streaked with gold.

Jyotee from Mumbai is exhibiting her recent works in the third room of this gallery. Perhaps it was a ploy of the gallery to exhibit the works of these two artists together as they could not have been more dissimilar, providing the classic introvert-extrovert contrast.

Jyotee’s large canvases are charged with visual energy. She seems to be in love with the act of splashing paint about. But, of course, it is controlled frenzy. In most of her works, she leaves expanses of the virgin canvas totally untouched by paint.

Her colours come in great waves that rise to a great height, and unlike Hokusai’s great work, often crash, creating a ripple effect. Jyotee, like Iris, uses a limited range of colours. The titles of her works are indicative of these — blue+red+green, blackwhitesienna, umberish. Ultimately, both painters complement each other.