Abhyantara Series 3 (The Apple of Her Eye)

A reclining nude is staged within a lattice of soft, ornamental shapes, where matte fields of mustard, cobalt, and umber press in like thought-bubbles that both shelter and suffocate. The figure’s head becomes an apple split open—an uncanny substitute for identity—turning the body into a site of appetite, vulnerability, and self-surveillance, while the patterned shadows read like drifting leaves or scars that refuse a single interpretation. Against this dreamy flattening of space, the lone sunflower held at the edge of the composition functions as a tender counterweight: a small insistence on warmth and sincerity within a psyche crowded by symbols.