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Medium:Mixed Media on Canvas
Size: 4ft x 4ft
Creation Date:2023
Collection:Hand-painted Photography
Theme: Human figure, body, portrait, photographic source material, identity, and painted intervention over images.
Palette: Misty White · Icy Grey · Pale Blue Shadow · Faded Black-White Photo · Ghosted Indigo

Cold Dream (2023) is a painting caught between clarity and fog — where the subconscious leaves a trace but refuses a narrative. Part of the Hand-painted Photography Collection, this 48 x 48 inch mixed media work fuses photographic realism with painted ambiguity to create an experience that feels both intimate and distant.

Built atop a black-and-white photo, the image has been veiled with layers of misty paint — soft whites, icy grays, and shadows of pale blue. Portions of the image peek through but remain indistinct, like fragments of a dream you can’t quite piece together upon waking.

I created Cold Dream during a time when my thoughts felt quiet but dense — not heavy, just hidden. The work emerged from that silence, and I resisted the urge to explain. Dreams don’t explain themselves. They linger. They stain.

This painting shares a tonal atmosphere with Bill Viola, particularly his slowed, meditative video works where time stretches and emotion thickens. Like Viola, I wanted to create a space that asks for stillness — not for understanding, but for surrender.

Cold Dream isn’t haunting. It’s hushed. It asks nothing of you but your attention. It holds you like fog — lightly, without edges.

As part of the Hand-painted Photography Collection, this painting reflects how memory and identity are layered. Not fixed. Not sharp. But always present.

Ritu Raj | Contemporary Abstract Painter | Phoenix

Ritu Raj is a contemporary abstract painter based in Phoenix, Arizona. His signature technique, Organic Movement, replaces the brush with thread — tracing the exact tension between control and surrender that holds a painting in motion. He has created over 200 original works collected across the US, Europe, and Asia, and is the author of the forthcoming The Shape of Seeing and The Unalgorithmic Self.

https://www.rituart.com/
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