Every colour in the catalogue at once, and none of them touching. The pale seams running between the blocks were not drawn on top — they are the ground showing through where two blocks stopped short of one another.

Jheel is a contemporary abstract painting by Ritu Raj — one blue with no edge anywhere in it, dissolving into light on the left and into near-black on the right. Oil on canvas, 2026.

Odhni is a contemporary abstract painting by Ritu Raj — four feet of one red laid over a 2021 canvas, with a dark upright standing through it. Oil on canvas, 2026.

The pause after motion — ridges cut for another painting, now running across water instead of down it.

Rajasthani women dancing, and the skirts doing what skirts are built to do — throwing colour outward while the body at the centre stays perfectly still.

Shiva's blue throat — the colour that comes from holding something and not letting it go.

Green, then yellow, then three blues, then red. For three days it would not balance. This morning I laid red across the whole canvas, put down too much, and spent the afternoon bringing it back with blue — scraping the whole time, so the red comes up through.

Abstract painting Sindoor Field by Ritu Raj: a saturated red field at six feet square, pooled light and dark across deep trowel-combed ridges that snake over the whole canvas, cooling toward oxblood at the right edge.

Abstract painting Sea Change by Ritu Raj: a combed blue field sweeping down from the upper left like weather over deep water, darkening toward navy at the upper right, with viridian and sea green diffused along the lower edge.

There is no center in this painting. A green world falling vertically, light arriving filtered, the whole surface the subject and nowhere in particular to land. Painted over a black and white canvas from 2024, whose comb still runs underneath.

Four arms of blue flow inward and meet, and at the meeting there is light — brighter than anything that arrived. Painted over a 2022 canvas turned ninety degrees, where the ridges of a painting that no longer exists carry all the glow.

‘Spiraling’ is drenched in stormy indigo and sunlit ochre, drawn from the The Pulse of Life collection. Not an image — but an encounter.