Landscapes stretched out on canvases with expressive faces looking in every direction. Their eyes are bulging out, often extremely alert to their surroundings. They are ready to face the uncertainties to come. This is how I can hope to describe P. R. Satheesh’s work.Satheesh is an artist based out of Kerala, whose style and story is marked with large-scale paintings of faces, along with complete and incomplete forms. Satheesh has a Bachelor’s degree in Painting from the Government College of Fine Arts, Thiruvananthapuram, and has participated in the 4th Kochi-Muziris Biennale.Satheesh’s ‘The Restless Field’ was exhibited at the Galerie Mirchandani-Steinruecke, New Delhi recently. In this exhibition, Satheesh wove stories of resilience and endurance without bounding them to any particular terrain or civilisation. Their existence is not confined to any social demarcation either. Instead, they represent an emotional spectrum of the inner state of human being. “My paintings ask questions rather than answer them. How do we live within constant change? How do we endure uncertainty? How do we remain awake in a reality that is always shifting?” Satheesh says. His work visually acknowledges an impermanence and the experience of learning to harmonise with personal, ecological and existential uncertainties. It is filled with anxieties. It feels a bit like death (2021) is representative of such a set of questions and reflects his early stage as an artist, wherein his works were defined by an “intense, confrontational engagement with anxiety and rupture.” This work shows omnipotent faces with protruding lips and exaggerated expressions. These faces are intertwined meticulously with other living organisms and inanimate creations with prominent black outlines. Colours merely become a part of the clustered faces and white becomes an agent to break the monotony of the web.The artist is able to hold multiple perspectives in his artwork. These perspectives are both technical and conceptual, addressing present realities, experiences and memories.It feels a bit like death, 2021 Acrylic on canvas 75.1 x 93.7 inches / 191 x 238 cm. Photo: Galerie Mirchandani- SteinruckeThere is also innocence and curiosity. The use of a child-like scribble gives the artist’s method the advantage of describing a memory. He creates a complex of interdependent organisms as an understanding of Earth’s reality. In a world where this interdependence is being forgotten and urban spaces are becoming more anthropocentric, Satheesh’s works remind me of returning to the sensibilities of the homeland.Homeland, for the artist, is not a specific location. This sense became stronger amid feelings of displacement as he built his career in urban spaces. His early life in an agrarian family in Kerala, close interaction with nature, and the people around him became reference points in his representation of reality and interdependence. The artist describes these as his emotional reservoir. “Growing up in proximity to nature, disasters, and silence shaped the way I perceive space, movement, and instability. Memory for me does not appear as a linear narrative but as overlapping layers like sediment, erosion, or flowing water.”In the same vein, the representation of events such as floods, landslides and sudden changes in nature imbue a sense of fragility in his stream of art. “My paintings often hold the tension between belonging and alienation, rootedness and movement. Through them, I negotiate my relationship with land, loss, and return,” Satheesh says.In What you actually are never dies (2023), the focus of the audience is held to a central figure who is shown in the process of enduring the complexities of his life, as well as self-reflection. His innocent scribbles reflect years of endurance. The awakening is complemented by shadows. There is an unusual, yet important focus on red juxtaposed with greys and whites conveying the intense emotion of the painting. This stage evolves to a state where Dissolution (2025) is composed. The lines fade to merge with space, suggesting interconnectedness and the eradication of separation. Backgrounds and foregrounds in bright combinations of green, blue and purple cannot be ignored. Their forms become a part of the painting, rather than forms becoming the paintings. A subtle merging of figuration and abstraction can be felt through the presentation of bright and soft brush strokes. An unintentional mysticism originates here due to the same reason, giving one the nostalgia of a village scene. The gleaming movement of children, a motherly figure and the aged with a child-like composition of indigenous flowers and trees in between invoke an emotion of joy in the painting. This metamorphosis in Satheesh’s use of colours is not merely aesthetic, but psychological, suggesting “a movement toward breath, pause, and acceptance.”Dissolution, 2025 Acrylic on canvas 96 x 72 inches / 243.8 x 182.8 cm. Photo: Galerie Mirchandani- SteinruckeAn untitled 31-foot work is another plain cradle where his ideas and figures attain life. The painting is exceptional as it shows the germination of an artwork by an artist with the forms that bridges his memory and craft. Satheesh’s narration is about resilience. He is able to find peace hiding beneath layers of endurance, he is able to tell a tale from the hills. Seeing familiar flowers, trees, birds and insects that we often neglect in our daily life invokes nostalgia. “But when we begin to visually narrate a story, they resurface subconsciously, reminding us how much even the tiniest element would have influenced us,” the artist says.Gopika Pattiyil is a curatorial assistant at NGMA, New Delhi.