Mirror Image

As with Akbar Padamsee's Metascape series begun in 1970, his Mirror Image paintings are also meditations on landscape, frequently completed as diptychs. Padamsee is concerned with the mythic or archetypal landscape, depicting classicly identifiable elements like the earth, the sun, and moon in a temporal space. These elements also represent different combinations of the basic elements of nature - earth, water, air and fire. The use of a bold palette, particularly the diametrically opposite colors of orange and blue, complements his choice of landscape as a subject, while his handling of color evokes a sense of movement in a static space. (Padamsee states "colors expand and contract, colors travel on the surface of static painting. Colors reach out of their skins to invade each others territories. Color trajectory is strategy. A colorist needs to master the art of silencing some colors, so as to render others eloquent.")