South India

Brihadeeswara at Thanjavur with its single granite tower, eleventh-century Chola engineering rising in one move. Meenakshi at Madurai, layered and many-coloured. Hampi’s boulder landscape with the Vijayanagara ruins folded into it. Rameswaram at the southern edge, where the country ends in shallow water. Bekal Fort over the Kerala coast.

Compositions across this collection paint the south — the older stone, the longer coast, the different humidity. The light here is more vertical than in the north; the shadows are shorter; the stone holds heat past sunset. The studio paints what the south teaches.

The south is the country at its oldest and quietest.