Time Flies 02.08.2023

Acrylic and pencil on paper.

From the Joseph Clark Collection:
"Acquired from the 2023 fundraising exhibition at Hosptial Rooms, this small but deeply affecting work by Sutapa has stayed with me ever since.

Part of Biswas’ ongoing Time Flies series, the work emerged following the death of the artist’s father, becoming an act of remembrance through birds, memory, and the passage of time. Biswas has spoken about a final conversation with her father around Marcel Proust’s evocation of a woodpigeon’s call cutting through a forest as a marker of time and distance. After his death, the first sound she heard was birdsong.

There is something incredibly moving to me about the way these paintings hold fragility, mortality, and tenderness simultaneously. The bird stands isolated yet luminous against the empty ground, carrying an emotional weight far beyond its modest scale. Less a painting of a bird, more a meditation on presence after absence."