A Sky full of Wings in Gond by Suresh kumar Dhruve

This beautiful Gond painting by artist Suresh Kumar Dhurve depicts a flock of birds. Originating from the Gond community of Madhya Pradesh, one of India's largest tribal groups, Gond art takes inspiration from the world around it, the forests, the rivers, the animals, the seasons. Birds and trees are not just subjects here; they carry meaning, narrate stories hold memory, and every painting is a way of acknowledging, respecting and nurturing this harmonious coexistence. This painting is busy in the best way, with the top half depicting small birds mid-flight, some facing different directions and a few caught mid-turn, each one a compact teardrop shape, slightly different in colour from the next, but clearly part of the same flock. Below them, three tall birds stand quietly on long crossed legs, their bodies dark and still and two smaller birds sit at the edges of the lower half, one on each side, the whole composition feeling like a single afternoon caught on paper. All the birds are filled with Suresh Kumar Dhurve's signature patterns - sidi- pidhi- dar-pidhi - symbolising the passing of the artform from generation to generation; ghisni - showing the texture achieved by rubbing the thumb on the canvas, with thin white dotted lines drawn over the top to trace the contour of their forms. The palette is rich without being heavy - magenta, cobalt, teal and bottle green in the flying birds, deep blue-black in the standing ones, maroon and rust at the edges. According to Gond belief, birds carry news between the living world and the spirit world, and seeing them painted in such numbers, some in the air and some on the ground, feels less like decoration and more like a moment from the forest held still just long enough to be seen.