British artist Lincoln Seligman, has always deeply loved India. Seligman is known for traveling to India every year to depict the country and its people, in brilliant colour with a layer of humour. He visits the Udai Bilas Palace, as a guest of his friend, the Maharaja of Dungarpur every year. Subjects are often Maharajas in flowing turbans riding in a Rolls Royce with their hunting cheetah companions.
In a press statement, it was revealed that he has been observing India over the years while staying in Udai Bilas Palace, Gujarat. His old school friend Maharaja of Dungarpur, collects Lincoln’s paintings and prints, as well as vintage motorcars and aeroplanes for his private museums. In return for the luxury of a mirrored suite of rooms in the palace, he offered Lincoln to paint in tranquillity, and a driver to take him in search of paintable people and places.
Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, his annual visit to India didn’t happen in 2020, therefore he channeled his creative genius and found new inspiration for a 2021 exhibition. His latest work comprises exuberant hedgerows in the english summer 2020, in juxtaposition with vibrant colours and teeming crowds of the subcontinent. The show will include approximately 30 paintings. Seligman immersed himself in the profusion of wildflowers near his home, seeing a parallel with the massed crowds and vivid turbans of India.
Lincoln has divided his new show into two parts: flower fields in the Oxfordshire countryside, and memories of India. During lockdown, his new Indian paintings are re-imaginings from collections of sketchbooks, painted as if through a film of gauze, rather than with the forceful brushwork of past times. The exhibition will take place at Osborne Studio gallery from May 11 to June 6, 2021.
