Paramjeet Singh's prints over the last three decades stand testimony essentially to two things: one, that his work is true to its creator insofar as it is free from any pretense and imitation. His vision is formidable in its honesty of approach, treatment and thematic choices. The second aspect, which is often overshadowed by his enviable control over the medium, is the underlying worldview based on observation and internalizing of an ‘Indian' sensibility, expressed through his prints.

In fact, I would like to argue that the primary discourse that informs Paramjeet Singh's work is that of colour. Form follows colour and the myriad tones of colour.

Though silk screen can be used to create textures also, Paramjeet is fascinated by the purity of colours revealed by flat surfaces. Within this he can produce thousands of shades and gradations of colour. These effects are produced through the use of multiple screens with half tone prints, an effect very different from the textured result produced by a mechanical dot screen. The former approach closely approximates the perfection of brush strokes. These tonalities provide his work both depth along with a certain surreal aura.

Even a cursory look at Paramjeet Singh's body of work over the last 30 years is enough to demonstrate to the viewer the complete mastery that he has achieved over the medium of silk screen printing. His prints have a characteristic luminosity that testify to the ease with which he manipulates colour to produce thousands of gradations in each colour in the true tradition prescribed by the Visnudharmottara, Natyashastra and other ancient texts on painting. This lightness of touch creates what in Paramjeet's case I would like to term serigraphic paintings produced through the print process.

He chose silk screen printing to express himself was the ability of the medium which allowed it to be manipulated in its purest forms. This is especially significant in the context of late 60's and 70's that mark the beginning of Paramjeet's artistic career because this was also the period when graphic arts such as lithography and etching were carving a niche for themselves. However, silk screen-printing was still being denied its legitimate place within the dominant discourse of contemporary art on the argument that it was “commercial” and therefore not individual and original enough. It was used mainly for making posters and book jackets. It is in such an era that Paramjeet stuck to serigraphy and provided it with a certain respectability and consistency as an art form. In many ways he used the technique and craft of serigraphy and melded it with the sensibility of contemporary artistic concerns.

While discussing Paramjeet's body of work one of the things that immediately strikes the viewer is the constancy of image. But a closer scrutiny reveals that this is misleading and the artist through a subtle and smooth orchestration of treatment has camouflaged the steady evolution of forms, be these in terms of adding motifs or increasing the scope of composition. One notices that in the 70's he had what may be roughly called a symbolic phase with lotus and geometric shapes and illuminated colours. The paintings of this period have been identified as surrealist, symbolist emphasizing geometricity but without Tantric overtones. In terms of forms we have a preference for squares, ovoids and floral motifs culminating in the lotus.

In the 80's the artist added clouds, human figures, leaves, butterflies, rainbow and the like to his composition. This was accompanied by constant experimentation with technique to achieve his signature style. In 1983 he started using a very coarse 60-80 mesh screen with conventional printers colours through which he succeeded in producing exceptionally flat opaque surfaces and delicately gradated shadings rarely possible with a brush. 1984 he attempted silk screen on canvas combining a painterly effect with serigraphic technique. His thematic choices increased to include what have been called ‘landscape of fantasy.' These tranquil scenes of pastoral ambience have one defining feature- rising forms of mountains from a flat plane, decontextualising the landscape and raising it to the realm of imagination. The iridescent colours of the print highlight this fantastic quality of the composition.

The last decade has been a very interesting phase in the artistic life of Paramjeet Singh insofar as we can see an endeavor towards reconciling the human world with that of nature. Thus human figures set in indoor scenes with flower pots and carpets vie with traditional forms such as still life and portraits.

One motif that has been seminal in the formation of Paramjeet's thought and art has been that of the lotus- padma, pankaja, utpala of the Indian tradition, one of the most complex and rich devices in Indian culture. It is present from his earliest works and has also been source of misunderstanding of his work as neo-Tantric. For him it represents the purity of life and the illumination of self, a symbol of completeness rather than perfection. This is later seen in his use of nature in his composition as source of energy and light. It is curious that Paramjeet should choose the lotus to define his artistic sensibility. Since ancient times it has carried with it connotations of fertility and water symbolism on one hand and of defining the world axis on the other. It has been considered the center of creation and the created world both.

He has been delving into the human form on and off for over two decades now. His first foray into figurative was through portraits of three painters canonized in modern Indian painting, Amrita Sher Gil, Nanadlal Bose which he called Homage. His recent exploration has been also through small prints of visages but this time Paramjeet is more interested in reaching and expressing the essence of the Indian personality. This is in no way a celebration of the ‘great Indian past' or the romanticized rural figure seen in the paintings of the Rajasthani belle lineage. On the contrary it is a direct engagement with contemporary society through images of the modern woman and the close shaven headed man. People on the street, people of popular interaction rather than heroic figures of imagination. For Singh, it is a way of dealing with and reflecting the changing human landscape around him.

These faces and figures are sometimes placed within the complex of a carefully created environment made up of flat surfaces interspersed with stylized objects and plant forms. To some it may appear to be an effort to merge still life with figuration but this is not the case, since each object is well harmonized with the other as well as with the entire composition as well. The striped dhurrie , the vases with tapering leaves all qualify the figure in terms of colour as well as character.

Paramjeet's search as an artist in not in the beyond but rather it is introspective. He looks within his own mental universe and links it with an inherited cultural discourse to produce a very honest picture without any pretentious intellectual baggage.

Paramjeet Singh’s silk-screens and oils at Delhi Silpi Chakra in the capital’s Shankar Market offer a veritable feast to the eyes with their neat and tidy execution, subtle assonance of colour balance harmonies forged out of diversified symmetries coalesced into a cohesive whole through colour echo and variegated use of line.

The artist’s pictorial elements are few: mountain lines, sky, clouds, abruptly rising tall peaks in cluster formations and flowers, one or two now shaped as a bud now in full bloom. To handle this limited vocabulary work after work, without giving a feeling of boredom or repetition is a unique feature of Paramjeet’s creative expression singularizing his landscapes.

There are obvious geometrical attitudes observable in his vision (a necessity enjoyed by silk-screen printing) circumscribing his approach to pictorial space. Barring a few works wherein evocatively graded colour recession indicate and highlight the planes, there is generally a sharp horizontal straight line running across the format to indicate the planes, the quality of content symbolized by the colour divide, exuding contrasting or assonant effects.

The placement of this line is thoughtful in terms of its significations. In No.2 and No.6, for instance, where it occurs at the top, the plane above indicates the sky, but work such as Nos.7 and 18, where this line comes in the middle, the intention is to capture the varying phenomenon of light.

The limitations enforced by geometry are not a handicap; on the contrary there is evidence that adoption of geometry is deliberate. The artist in truth is a great master of colour. Except for the essential features already mentioned, Paramjeet’s landscapes exist nowhere. Consequently, his projections bring into view, in their final analysis, enchanting states of his soul, its upward rising aspirations (the peaks), its quiescent moments of peace, balancing of inner moves, self-absorbedly tranquil, sanguinely happy, symmetrically discipline. Comprehensible inner sadhana, but the artist needs a breakthrough to arrive at a newer higher spirituality.

SILK-SCREEN printing is a relatively new process in the history of printing as a whole. In fact it is only in the past two to three decades that it has gained popularity as a medium for individual artistic expression. The adaptability of silk-screen printing for experimentation and innovation has ensured its survival in many areas of its application i.e., from simple hand printing to automatic printing machines.

Basically being a stencil process, it has two phases. Although stencils were used by the ancient Egyptians, Romans, Chinese and Japanese for decorating walls, floors, ceilings, potteries and fabrics, yet the application of stencils to stretched fabric for printing in the way that it is known today, is a more recent development. Screen priting has lately been used by artists to apply both autographic and photographic images on canvas.

Paramjeet Singh, who is exhibiting a series of creative silk-screen works on canvas, along with some of his oil paintings at the Delhi Silpi Chakra Gallery has successfully adapted the technique, for accurately reproducing his unique effects in the silk-screen media.

His silk-screen prints, which are rather complex images in multicolour blended inks, with 20 to 25 impressions in each case, are perfectly executed with the least registration discrepancy. He has, in fact, achieved the effect of his paintings in his silk-screen so well that it becomes difficult to discriminate between the two. It is particularly so because the surface for the silk-screen printing is the same canvas that he has used as a ground for his painting.

He has evolved a style for his paintings that lends itself to a reproduction in multiples in the silk-screen media. Despite the use of a simple hand printing process, he has achieved a very sophisticated effects in his prints. Paramjeet’s images represent the tranquility of pastoral nature in a landscape of fantasy. The calmness of nature is expressed by the dominant horizon and its dignity symbolised by the rising forms of mountains, changing colours according to the moods of nature. the freshness is expressed by the clear blue lakes and lush green fields and the joy of existence manifested in the blossoming forms and colours of flowers and shrubs. A few floating clouds in the sky and rainbow-a symbol of hope encompassing all the colours of the prism-express the earth’s fullness and satiation after long awaited rains. All these express the mysterious and continual process of nature’s functioning.

The colour ranging from sombre greys, blues and mauves to soft ochres and greens to brighter hues in the flowers and the rainbow create harmonious and highly attractive colour effects. The insertion of a butterfly here and there, adds to the moods of nature that vary from the morning glory to the calmness of the setting sun.

It is indeed the theme of nature that dominates in Paramjeet’s work rendered with subtleness and sesitivity.