Sumesh Kamballur

In Search of the Forgotten Green

The echoes of childhood — spent in a tranquil village nestled beside the forest — continue to reverberate vividly across Sumesh’s canvas. These early memories, rich with wonder and wildness, are not just recollections, but living landscapes within his artistic world. His adventurous forays into the forest, often in pursuit of a rare fruit or simply to lose himself in the leafy expanse, manifest in poetic and surreal forms throughout his work.

Sumesh’s paintings are enchanted forests — not merely depictions of trees and foliage, but dreamscapes where memory, myth, and imagination intertwine. Dense clusters of leaves in iridescent colours form abstract shapes that teeter between the real and the surreal. His compositions are alive with secretive rhythms and playful curiosity — like visual lullabies sung to a vanishing world.

A recurring and evocative motif in his oeuvre is that of trees growing from abandoned wells — a powerful metaphor for regeneration, hope, and the silent persistence of nature. These trees, often crowned by wild animals perched like ancient guardians, stretch toward the sky as if trying to pluck the full moon. The imagery is whimsical yet deeply layered — a fantastical narrative wrapped in ecological longing.

Through his work, Sumesh explores not just the beauty of the natural world but its fragility. His paintings mourn the gradual disappearance of the innocent village life — its delicate rhythms disrupted by deforestation, migration, and modernity. Yet, his vision is not devoid of hope. It carries an underlying yearning — a belief in the return of green, the rebirth of balance, the revival of a more harmonious coexistence with nature.

Sumesh’s art is an invitation — to remember, to reconnect, and to reimagine. His visual language, at once nostalgic and fantastical, bridges the personal and the universal, the rooted and the untamed.

Born in 1982 in Kasargod, Kerala, Sumesh is a trained artist and illustrator. He earned his BFA in Painting and Graphic Art from the College of Fine Arts, Trivandrum (2006), and completed his MFA in Painting from the prestigious Kala Bhavana, Santiniketan. His works reflect a synthesis of academic precision and intuitive storytelling, offering viewers an immersive journey into a world where memory blooms through leaves, wells whisper of time, and animals dream with their eyes open.