The Open Studio / Suha Mir
Suha Mir
Roots
Pale hands, tied with thread, rest in the dark
Black ink pressed deep, like soil after rain.
Two pale hands, knuckles soft as worn cloth.
Thread loops around each finger and falls.
It hangs the way roots hang from a cut bank.
Above, white leaves curl out of the square.
They do not wait for the edge.
The hands stay still. They are holding on.
The work
Suha Mir makes Roots as a drypoint print on paper. The lines are scratched straight into a plate and then printed. Here the scratches build soft, deep blacks. Pale hands rest at the centre. Thin threads wrap the fingers and hang down like roots. Dark cloth fills most of the square. At the top left, curling white shapes grow past the edge of the plate. Mir marks this sheet as the first of two prints. Mir is from Srinagar and studies at the College of Art, University of Delhi.
- Theme
- Hands, ties and roots
- Material
- Drypoint print on paper
- Year
- 2026
- Edition
- 1 of 2
- Framed
- Yes
- About the artist
- College of Art, University of Delhi
- From
- Srinagar
- Code
- RC-464
In the artist’s words
These are the behind the scenes of my plein air paintings. The first picture is of a piece that I did this summer— plein air oil on canvas. I visiting my family for the summer, and over the weekend, we drove about a hundred kilometres out of the city to take in some fresh air. A day after we got there, the weather turned quite moody— it got cold and cloudy pretty fast. I wanted to catch that feeling—taking in that smell of the rain, and quickly got my painting kit out and set to work under the open sky. Unfortunately for me, I could not finish the painting as…
