A touch of peace doesn’t always come quite literally, sometimes the sense of sight fulfills the role. In times when shadows are ruling the ambience, spiritual strokes by nine Kolkata-based artists may be a balm for those in search of solace. The many frames, the many styles, the many colours bind themselves and the onlookers in a single thread of a silent musings.

Shyamal Mukherjee’s pen and ink strokes trace four different moods of a couple, both with painted toe nails, thick mouths, and a characteristic penetrating look. Subuddha Ghosh journeys through time with three large canvases peeping into different households. Through the doors he shows us a glimpse of affluence, tradition and dilapidation. His compositions are strong and compact. Asit Sarkar paints a loving figure of a flautist. The grey tones give the paintings a rather Greek touch. Amidst mask like faces Swapan K Palley paints his subjects. The bodies rest subtly on the faces that may have the freedom to speak but lack the ability to see. Bejewelled and resting on flowers, Palley’s men and women look like actors of a stage performance.

For Puja Bahri, the faces lie behind layers of textures. Sharp angular and curved strokes define closed eyes. The density and darkness surrounding that profiles is broken by the subtle smiles that the protruding lips hint of. Against black and red background Jagannath sketches a subtle love story of a woman and a swan. Bratin Khan and Balaji Ubale make the lotus prominent characters in their colour play. Khan’s canvas holds little Ganesha, Krishna and his flute find a dreamy existence on Ubale’s canvas. Vijay Belgave presents portraits of a girl in framed geometry.

The exhibition is on at Art Folio, Sector 9, till December 11.