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Storm (2020) is part of my Ephemeral Atmosphere Collection, created during the height of the pandemic when internal and external worlds collided in turbulence. This 48 x 48 inch acrylic on canvas is a visual echo of that emotional unrest — a storm not of skies, but of the psyche.

The painting is layered with restless gestures, tangled lines, and bursts of saturated blues and deep grays, colliding across the canvas like unpredictable weather systems. There’s no fixed center, no grounding element; instead, the composition churns, mirroring the disorientation of navigating an invisible crisis.

In spirit, Storm connects deeply with the works of Julie Mehretu, whose sprawling gestural abstractions often evoke the dissonance of social, political, and urban unrest. Like Mehretu, I aim to create surfaces that pulse with energy, conflict, and layered narratives. Yet where Mehretu’s maps expand outward into collective terrains, Storm turns inward, becoming a weather system of the self — an internal landscape of tension, anxiety, and survival.

This painting is not about depiction but enactment. The strokes resist calm; they refuse to settle. Storm captures the emotional weather of 2020 — the uncertainty, the claustrophobia, and the relentless search for grounding amidst chaos.

As part of the Ephemeral Atmosphere Collection, this work stands as both document and release — a painted storm that invites the viewer to step inside, to feel its charge, and perhaps, to find their own rhythm within the chaos.

Ritu Raj | Contemporary Abstract Painter | Phoenix

Ritu Raj is a contemporary abstract painter based in Phoenix, Arizona, working mostly at scale — canvases of five to eight feet. His practice runs in two bodies: Abstract Inquiry, in oil and acrylic, and Organic Movement, which replaces the brush with thread, using gravity and viscosity as compositional instruments. More than 260 works, collected across the US, Europe and Asia. He is the author of the forthcoming The Shape of Seeing and The Unalgorithmic Self.

https://www.rituart.com/
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Remains: Traces, Fragments, and the Echo of What Was