“Tide” and “Time Past Time Present”

Tara Sabharwal’s work has two very different reactions for me. I found myself very drawn to her slightly older works, such as “Tide” (2013), which I have decided is my favorite on her site. The mix of cooler grey and warmer pinks and orange makes the painting almost relaxing to look at. The horizontal scratch marks summon the image of light reflecting off water, which is reenforced by the more red tones below it. Despite not being in the center, the centerpiece of the painting, the orange and white streak of light, coming from a green and white shape, is very eye-catching. For me, it resembled first an oyster, and then, when orienting myself above, not below, the water’s surface, a ship going up in flames. Perhaps a little morbid, but the green and white did summon the image of a white ship, it’s stern facing the viewer, with fire rising from the starboard side. The stars, looking like eyes (or maybe oysters yet again) were the last thing I noticed, and one which surprised me when I suddenly realized they were everywhere I had looked. In any regard, Tide is absolutely my favorite painting in Sabharwal’s gallery.
To address to polar opposite, some of Sabharwal’s paintings made me feel strangely uncomfortable. Taking, for example, “Time Past Time Present”, the second painting you see on her archive, from 2015. There is a very uneasy element about it for me. Contemporary art does admittedly tend to make me uneasy to begin with, with the foreign, abstract, and closed spaces of color; Looking at it for too long at it makes me feel disoriented and a little claustrophobic. Time Past Time Present especially so, although I can’t say why for sure. It’s something about the endless grey background, the lilypad-like structures drifting on an invisible water surface, filled with deep and dark holes with sharp edges. It’s an alien landscape, if an alien landscape existed just to trigger Trypophobia. The dark black shape moving under the “lilypads”, to the left of the frame, also inspires a secondary sense of unease for me, a gnawing wonder of what caused that shadow, and if it’s moving towards or away from the viewer.
Perhaps (and I know I do) overthink paintings to the extreme, but I thought of two of Sabharwal’s works in very different ways, summoning two very different emotions. Despite the fact the second painting made me feel less comfortable than I was before viewing it, I still think it stands as a testament to artistic skill. There is talent in being able to make the viewer feel something, despite almost nothing in the painting resembling reality.