Soumya Netrabile (b. 1966, Bangalore, India) does not think of herself as a landscape painter, nor of what she paints as landscapes. Instead, her works – though occasionally revealing glimpses of swirling, golden foliage, or the jewel-like oerings of a misty sea – take on the notes of lyrical abstraction, forged through a ritualistic and intuitive approach to artmaking.
Netrabile’s practice is one of interconnectedness: borne from the natural world, channelled through the body, and returned to the perceiving soul. In this sense, the artist is a poet of the canvas: each of her brushstrokes is a suggestion of something expansive and deeply personal, drawn from the crunch of a twig or the ostensibly impenetrable surface of a stone in the pocket. Indeed, the title of this show – suggesting an intimate and talismanic engagement with nature – originates from the artist’s collection of forest detritus on her daily walks.
It also refers to a poem by Pablo Neruda, ‘Oh Earth, Wait for Me’, in which the Chilean poet writes of an ancient woods filled with the damp aroma of larch needles and a breeze like a beating heart. His ending note immortalises the purity of a stone, borne by the river – a simple but dignified incarnation of such a rich and evocative world:
“I don’t mind
being one stone more, the dark stone,
the pure stone which the river bears away”
Netrabile’s paintings are like these stones: singular object portals into somatic presence. Their sensory lushness evokes a cellular, embodied awareness of the self, and of its interconnectedness. The artist exists in a lineage of artists aiming to transcend the purely optical through the ostensibly two-dimensional medium of painting.
After all, as Netrabile reminds us, the complete senses are tools held by humans not just for survival, but for building memories, exchanges, and connections. ‘A Stone in My Pocket’ works at the intersection of the material and spiritual worlds, drawing on traditions of vitality in ritual objects, as well as theories of energy transference and – importantly – a playful rediscovery of sensory engagement. In these works, the soothing glow of a setting sun and the statuesque posture of a mountain become the raw matter of desire and conflict, or transition and turbulence. The surface of their canvases become playgrounds for movement, energy, and transformation – from being to being, and body to spirit.
Text by Ella Slater
