Celestial Riptide – Where Color Spirals Into Force
Medium: Oil on Canvas
Size: 5ft x 5ft
Creation Date: 2025
Collection: Organic Movement
Celestial Riptide is a 60 x 60 inch oil on canvas from the Organic Movement Collection, created using Ritu Raj’s signature thread painting technique. It captures the sensation of elemental energy—swirling, converging, and breaking apart in a vibrant, physical abstraction.
The composition is built around a dynamic central ring that draws crimson, cobalt, and violet tones into a sweeping storm of layered motion. These marks aren’t made with brushes, but with thread pulled through oil—leaving behind visceral trails of texture and force. It’s a technique that blurs painting and performance, precision and improvisation.
The influence of artists like Fabienne Verdier—known for using unconventional tools to create gestural forms—is present here, yet Celestial Riptide retains a distinctive voice rooted in intimacy and internal movement. Where Verdier’s work often reads as monumental and calligraphic, Ritu Raj’s gestures feel quieter, more organic—like a current beneath the surface of experience.
“In Celestial Riptide, I wasn’t thinking about the cosmos literally, but about how forces move through us — and leave marks we don’t fully understand.” — Ritu Raj
This painting represents the core of the Organic Movement collection: hand-painted abstraction where every gesture is unrepeatable. No digital intervention. No reproductions. Just oil, canvas, twine, and process. It’s abstraction made tactile, and emotion made visible.
