Ephemeral Atmospheres

“Abstraction allows man to see with his mind what he cannot physically see with his eyes... Abstract art enables the artist to perceive beyond the tangible, to extract the infinite out of the finite. It is the emancipation of the mind. It is an explosion into unknown areas.” —Arshile Gorky

When depicting landscapes and natural phenomena or conceptualizing human qualities such as a heartbeat or an expression of love, Raj exploits textural effects to express the transitory nature of his subjects. Whether using vigorous swirling brushwork or scratching into thick paint with a rake, he creates animated surfaces that lend a transcendent quality to his imagery, such that it seems at times to lie somewhere in the amorphous zones between the physical and the metaphysical.