Unearthing Silence: The Material Landscapes of Harmeet Singh
To engage with Harmeet Singh's work, first engage with the geography of silence
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Published in The Wise Owl Ed. 51 Feb 2026
Based in ​​New Chandigarh, Singh works from Studio Irises, a space nestled on the delicate boundary between urban growth and the primal density of a protected forest. This location is not accidental; it represents the central tension that energizes his practice. Singh paints neither the forest nor the city. He paints the friction between the two. He explores how organic chaos clashes with structured order, and how the human mind seeks tranquility amidst the noise of an ever-accelerating world.
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The contemporary art world is often obsessed with identity, politics, assumed postures and figurative narratives. Singh's commitment to pure abstraction however is perceived as a quiet act of defiance. His works do not clamor for attention; they wait. His artworks invite the viewer to slow down and observe. For a critic, Singh becomes an archaeologist of the present moment. Through the relentless fluidity of watercolor and the geological layering of acrylic, he searches for Shunyata, a fertile void, where forms dissolve and potential emerges.
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The Risk of the water
A interesting part of Singh's artistic exploration is the medium associated with hobbyists: watercolor. However, there is nothing conventional about the way Singh uses water. In his works as Pressure Fields III and Dandelion at Dawn, the medium is treated as a volatile ingredient rather than just as an accessory.
Singh comes from a background which was characterized by extreme rigor and precision. He is trained in medicine (MBBS), management (MBA) and worked in the civil service. But Singh's choice to turn to wet-on-wet technology represents a profound psychological upheaval. He abandons the “correct” result in favor of an authentic expression. In Pressure Fields III, the paper is saturated, allowing pigments to diffuse and mix. This results in a heavy atmosphere, capturing humidity and pressure rather than mere surface details. There are no clear lines, only the nuances of indigo and violet, evoking a storm that is brewing.
His technique requires a high tolerance for failure. He only initiates a gesture, allowing gravity and evaporation to complete the process. In Dandelion at Dawn, the negative space, the raw white of the paper, becomes as structural as the paint. It becomes a subtraction exercise. Singh understands that in watercolor, light cannot be added later; it must be preserved from the start. This preservation of the light, in the middle of the washes and bleeds of color, constitutes a moving metaphor of the “morning calm” . The artist seeks to immortalize this on paper. This fragility actually survives because it does not resist.
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The Geology of Acrylics
If Singh’s watercolors are about the atmosphere, Singh’s acrylic works are grounded in the earth. When working on canvas, the physical interaction changes. The brush is replaced by the palette knife, and the stain by a scar.
In the Studio series, particularly in the work The Gyre, Singh explores the concept of energy within a contained system. A centrifugal swirling vortex that threatens to disorient the viewer. However, the chaos is held in check by a sophisticated chromatic structure. Singh uses deep blues, oceanic greens, and earthy deep greens, which anchor the movement. The paint here is not flat; it is built up, scraped, and layered. This is the “post-digital hand” in action. In an era where images are increasingly consumed on smooth, backlit screens, Singh insists on the tactile reality of the object. He wants the viewer to see the ridges of pigment, the history of the underpainting, and the physical labor of the brush.
This material density elevates to a spiritual verticality in Lightfall 48 x 48 inches. Here the canvas asserts itself in the viewer’s space. The subject is ostensibly light, but it is rendered with dense, opaque material. The white and pale golden rays pierce the twilight of the background, created not by delicate glazes, but by aggressive subtraction and addition. It is a visual representation of discovery: the Eureka! moment when clarity dispels the fog. However, by depicting this light with a dense impasto, Singh suggests that clarity is not a gift, but a construction; something sculpted from the bedrock of everyday experience.
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The Inner Landscape
It is impossible to separate these abstractions from the concept of Shunyata, the Buddhist notion of emptiness, which is not non-existence, but the lack of intrinsic nature. Singh's forms are always transforming into something different. Winter Sky is the most evocative example of this. It captures the specific, melancholic light of northern Indian winter, playing it against a haze of particles. But the painting is not a weather report; it is an internal exploration. It is a latent mental state, hoping, conserving energy. The muted color palette of ochres, subdued golds, subtle sienna do not offer easy emotional release. It holds the viewer in a state of suspension.
Similarly, Cosmic Dancer and Planet of Small Things bridge the microscopic and the macroscopic. Singh seems to argue that the patterns found in a single cell are identical to the patterns of a galaxy. The dance of the Cosmic Dancer is ritualistic and recursive. He avoids the trap of decorative abstraction to maintain a raw unpolished touch of something unfinished. There is a wabi-sabi aesthetic at play: an appreciation of the imperfect and the transient.
A Universal Language
What makes Singh’s work resonate beyond the specific locality of Chandigarh is its refusal of narrative specificity. Abstraction is his Lingua Franca. This universality is evident in his trajectory: from the walls of the ICCR in Kolkata and the Bombay Art Society to the International stage at Dubai World Art (April 2025) and the Voghera Gallery in Italy.
The global audience, especially in the context of the pandemic, also finds in this art a breath of fresh air. We are drowning in data, and Singh offers us silence. However, this is not a passive silence. It is an active and vibrant tranquility. The concerns about presence, materiality, and the nature of consciousness have been cultivated in the confines of Studio Irises by him. These are now being planted everywhere.
Conclusion
Harmeet Singh's work is a curatorial record of painting that is not dead; but it has simply become internalized. He uses the medium to slow down time. In his hands, the whirlwind of the modern world is defined, given purpose, and reorganized into a composition that we can contemplate. He does not offer an image of the world as it is, but rather the sensation of the world as it feels. This sensation is a point between the fluidity of water and the firm texture of an acrylic knifestroke. This point gives us precious space to breathe.
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