Mars
Medium: Acrylic on Canvas
Size: 7.5ft x 6ft
Creation Date: 2022
Collection: Ephemeral Atmosphere
Mars (2022) is a 90 x 72 inch acrylic painting that belongs to Ritu Raj’s Ephemeral Atmosphere Collection, a body of work that wrestles with the psychological and emotional states born out of isolation. While titled after the red planet, Mars is less about astronomy and more about emotional distance, arid memory, and alienation—rendered in warm, volatile hues and fractured geometric language.
The painting is dominated by rusty reds, burnt oranges, and dry ochres, layered in a way that suggests tectonic shifts, scorched landscapes, and silent cosmic storms. Bold gestures intersect with more delicate marks, mimicking the way time and trauma etch themselves into both land and psyche. The result is a visual terrain that feels both planetary and personal—distant, yet familiar.
There’s an echo of Mark Bradford’s approach here, especially in the way surface erosion and layered history are used as expressive tools. Like Bradford, Raj is interested in how material layering can stand in for lived experience. But where Bradford often engages with urban and social maps, Mars is more introspective—a psychogeography of solitude.
The painting resists literal interpretation. Instead, it conjures questions: Is this Mars the planet? A metaphor for inner exile? A speculative dreamscape born from lockdown reveries? The abstraction opens space for all these interpretations, resisting any single narrative.
In the context of the Ephemeral Atmosphere Collection, Mars represents the otherworldly feeling of living through a global rupture. As our planet shut down, Mars became not just a point of scientific curiosity, but a poetic stand-in for detachment, disconnection, and the longing for reconnection. This painting captures that longing—not with despair, but with layered warmth and textured resilience.
Studio Journal: Reflections in Abstraction
