Lyrical Compositions of Om Prakash

Om Prakash’s works seem to restate William Blake’s observation “I question not my corporeal or vegetative eye any more than I would question a window concerning a sight. I look through it and not with it”. There is a tightness of construction in these paintings, a continuity of mood which runs the gamut from metaphysical vision to hard realism. One is aware of no schizophrenic gap, between Om Prakash’s landscapes of the early sixties, conceived in an impressionistic manner, and these equally lyrical compositions with their soaring peaks and vales of colour, flat dark seas and undulating yellow moons. In both one senses a preoccupation with the immanence of God in nature and in all that pulsates with life. Other end of the Void (Fig. 30 Page 21) is a powerful work which suggests the heavy freight of human destiny with just one small orderly segment of red colour, balancing in the void, pointing to the end of the dark tunnel of life, as it were.

Art Critic, The Economic Times, New Delhi, 20 October 1971