Artist: Govinda Sah ‘Azad’

October Gallery presents its fifth solo exhibition of compelling works by Govinda Sah ‘Azad’, a Nepalese artist now working in Margate. This exhibition highlights Sah’s latest large-scale oil and acrylic paintings on canvas and presents selected smaller scale works. Journey to the Heart of Light weaves together the artist’s personal journeys through both inner and outer realms.

Beginning his artistic career in the Himalayan mountains close to where he was born, Sah first moved to London to study at Wimbledon College of Arts, before moving from London to Margate, where he recently opened a purpose-built studio. Although seemingly unconnected, the landlocked peaks of the high Himalaya and the tumultuous seascapes of Margate are connected in Sah’s imagination by the atmospheric clouds that envelop them, which upon parting reveal dynamic vistas illuminated by shafts of light below. Sah’s intensely detailed work is filled with an inner light, one that he first admired in the expressive radiance he found in J. M. W. Turner’s oil paintings. As a young man Turner had travelled widely throughout Europe depicting mountain landscapes bathed in ethereal light before becoming enthralled, later in life, by the very different lighting regimes playing above more sombre English seascapes, particularly around the coasts of Margate. Sah’s paintings, although different both in design and execution, afford tantalising reflections of the light that guided him to follow in the English Master’s footsteps as he, too, travelled from spectacular mountain views to draw inspiration from Margate’s dramatic seascapes.

Fascinated by the changing qualities of light playing through various layers of cloud, Sah represents his shifting experiences of the outer environment to explore more subtle emotional changes occurring within his ‘inner landscape.’ Sah’s works are composed of densely interwoven layers of mark-making that build layer upon layer of oil and acrylic paints upon the canvas. For Sah, as the painted surface becomes saturated with detailed layers, the reiterative act of painting resolves into a meditation on the complex enigmas of life itself. Describing how this operates, Sah states, ‘Painting becomes this continual process of losing myself...During these dialogues (with the painting), ideas arise within me, surfacing through the mysterious process of painting. Knowledge exists outside all of us and, for me, painting is the activity by which I reach out to discover it.’

Sah has never been afraid of addressing grand themes unfolding on cosmic scales. While earlier series portrayed visionary glimpses of intergalactic spaces full of nebulic clusters illuminated by light travelling from distant stars, these new works strike out in novel directions. Here, the canvases focus in on what appear to be coastal tide-pools, half-hidden underwater coves and intricate rock formations upon pebble-strewn beaches. What is particular about this artist is his ability to move from macro to microcosm with astonishing ease, shifting imperceptibly between different phases, as rocks disappear into aqueous depths and matter seems to arise, spontaneously, from out of the void. Discussing his enigmatically alluring paintings, the philosopher Anthony Blake has written, ‘(Sah’s) very tangible, textured, exquisite and astonishing canvases are windows into primordial worlds and the mystery of how nothing becomes something.’

Govinda Sah’s latest canvases define a new waypoint on his adventurous career to date, providing a privileged peek into the artist’s ever-unfolding journey to the inner Heart of Light!

About Govinda Sah

Govinda Sah ‘Azad’ (Born in 1974, in Rajbiraj, Nepal. Lives and works in Margate, UK) joined the MA Fine Art course in Dhaka, Bangladesh in 2006, but soon thereafter acquired sponsorship and moved to London to study. Govinda obtained a MA in Fine Art from Wimbledon College of Art in 2008.

His first solo exhibition at October Gallery, Transcriptions, was held in 2011. In 2012 his work was included in the Summer Exhibition at Royal Academy of Arts, London. In 2013 October Gallery held his second solo show Lightness of Being and Tibet House, New York, USA presented the solo exhibition, The Universe Within. Boundless Possibilities (2016) was his third exhibition, followed by a fourth solo exhibition, Absence Presence (2022-2023) at October Gallery. Govinda Sah’s works can be found in private collections worldwide.