Visual Language
Saggu was the Second Prize winner of International Artist magazine’s Challenge No. 110, Abstract/Experimental Art.
Indian artist Sukhvinder Saggu, who has been living and working in Canberra, Australia, since 1997, paints primarily in a traditional realistic style. However, he sometimes does abstract expressionist works to free himself from a more precise process. Those paintings are filled with bold brushstrokes and abstract shapes. “Transforming your emotional tension to a visual language onto a two-dimensional surface, one needs forms, shapes, colors, textures and some methodology,” he says. “I prefer a very tidy, tightly rendered fine art image but not exactly hyperrealism.”
Saggu finds inspiration in the objects and the people in his daily life, and his artwork is usually is done in continuous series. For example, 15 years ago Saggu began the floral series Close Encounter where each flower was painted on a large canvas. “I felt society now has less time to pause and ‘smell the flowers’ due to the advent of the internet,” he explains. “Then I followed it up with a series on still life paintings by arranging simple objects with my favorite fruits on a tabletop. I am currently working on a series based on people, faces and figures.”
One painting from the still life series is Lemon Tea, which was inspired by a tea set that a friend gifted Saggu. “The tea set has a very harmonious contrast colour that motivated me to paint it to celebrate the friendship in a painting,” he says. “After various arrangements with the tea set I settled on a couple of lemons arranged on the edge of a coffee table over a smooth tablecloth that was painted in purple to highlight the yellow color of lemons.”
Along with his commissions, Saggu has participated in many art competitions and exhibitions and has won awards in India and Australia.