Flight of Shadows, a large yellow abstract thread painting by Ritu Raj (oil on canvas with thread, 5 × 6 ft)

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Organic Movement · 2024

Flight of Shadows

String Painting as Gesture and Tension

5 × 6 ft · Oil on canvas with thread · 2024

Available · in the studio, Phoenix

Visit the studio

Shadows that move — string painting as the trace of something passing through dark rather than landing in it.

Yellow first. An electric, almost aggressive yellow that refuses to be background — it is field, it is pressure, it is the condition everything else has to survive.

Then thread. Pulled through wet oil in long sweeping arcs, black against yellow, the marks airborne and tethered at once. Flight of Shadows is an Organic Movement painting, which means the thread doesn't illustrate gesture — it is gesture. The body moves, the thread follows, the oil captures what happened. Not what was intended. What happened.

The black forms sit on that yellow ground like shadows that arrived before the thing casting them. Calligraphic. Atmospheric. Asking you to find the source of the flight.

This painting belongs to a lineage of work that treats the mark as evidence — not of skill, but of motion, of tension, of the moment the material stopped being negotiable. Sam Francis understood that color could be structural. Pollock understood that gesture could exceed the hand. Flight of Shadows works in the place those two understandings converge: the mark that carries both light and weight.

Where to see it. In person at RituStudio, Phoenix, by appointment. Represented by Jarrow & Goodman, Los Angeles.

The space it needs

Wall
At least 8 ft wide
Ceiling
9 ft or more
Light
Warm ambient light enhances organic palette — thread catches light beautifully
Daylight
The electric yellow ground is bright enough to sit near a window without washing, though west sun will push it toward cadmium. Low raking light picks out the black thread gesture in relief.

Lives best in

Bedroom 5/5

The raw parchment tones and spectral gray anchor the yellow to something quieter, and the thread gestures, airborne but tethered, carry exactly the kind of suspended aliveness that makes a bedroom feel rested rather than inert.

Hotel lobby 5/5

The large warm yellow field reads instantly from across a lobby, and the thread casting actual shadow as light shifts gives the piece a live, hour-by-hour quality that keeps returning guests discovering something new.

Details

Size
5 × 6 ft (W × H)
Medium
Oil on canvas with thread
Year
2024
Collection
Organic Movement
Palette
Electric Yellow · Cadmium Yellow · Olive Bronze · Charcoal · Near Black
Weight
About 45 lb
Ready
In the studio; delivery 6–10 weeks

Its ArtGram

ArtGram.Fork

  • Texture3
  • Form2
  • Colour range2
  • Palette4.8
  • Contrast4.3
  • Abstraction Quotient1
Read the full reading on ArtGraph →

Keywords

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