Echoes of Experience: Anurag Anand on crafting meaning through mediums
Anurag Anand, a renowned visual artist, bestselling author, and accomplished corporate professional known for his masterful blend of color, emotion, and narrative, is coming up with his solo exhibition, ‘Echoes,” by Gallery Silver Scapes, from 13th–18th August 2025, at LTC, Bikaner House, Delhi, where he will be showcasing 60 pieces crafted in mediums ranging from acrylic on canvas to watercolor, charcoal, and oil on paper. In an exclusive conversation with ETimes Lifestyle, he talks about his exhibition and how he stays authentic in such diverse creative and professional spaces. “Echoes” brings together abstraction and realism in such a powerful way. What was the emotional or conceptual spark behind this new series?The exhibition, Echoes, comprises artworks that rely on manmade structures and their interplay with nature and humanity to convey my musings, ideas and emotions. The grey space between realism and abstraction allows me the freedom to convey what I wish to and keep the potential interpretations within bounds. So, while the abstraction lets a viewer’s experiences and persona determine what the artworks say to them, the realism acts as a guardrail to prevent complete distortion of the intended message.As someone who moves seamlessly between words and visuals, how does your writing influence your painting—and vice versa?I have always viewed writing and art as significant mediums of expression. When I am crafting a story, as part of my characterization process, I visualize my principal characters in their natural habitat. Their dwellings, the neighborhoods they come from, intuitively tells me how they think, behave and are likely to respond to a particular situation. This practice helped me discover a unique language, and it is this language of structures that you can see in this series of artworks as well.
Many of your works feel deeply personal yet universally relatable. How do you channel personal experiences into such accessible narratives on canvas?As individuals, our world view is a compendium of our personal experiences. When an artist approaches their practice with honesty and sincerity, shades of this world view, and by extension their experiences, inadvertently show up in their creations. And it is this very honesty of approach that lends a universal appeal to the works. The absence of superficiality and guise makes such creations more real for those who engage with them. The artist in me feels truly humbled by your observation that my works feel personal and yet are relatable. This is a balance that I shall continue to strive for in every creation of mine.
With “Echoes” spanning mediums from acrylic and oil to watercolor and charcoal, how do you choose which medium best conveys a particular emotion or theme?The message chooses the composition, and the composition chooses the medium. My process starts with what I wish to convey, and I spend a considerable amount of time mulling over the numerous ways in which the intended message can be visually depicted. Once the image of the end output has formed in my head, the choice of medium becomes a lot easier. For mediums like oil and acrylic which can deliver similar outputs, the choice is more pragmatic. Since oil colours take a lot longer to dry, I use acrylics when working with stringent deadlines.
From writing novels to art exhibitions and corporate boardrooms—how do you stay authentic in such diverse creative and professional spaces?Authenticity is natural, deception is not. Presenting a different face during each appearance depending on what the audience expects might be a shortcut to garnering louder applause, but it doesn’t come naturally to me. I find it a lot easier to take my one true self along wherever I go. Be it my creative engagements or my workplace, I let my value system be the guide for my actions. This might not make me the most popular person in the room, but it is deeply satisfying, nevertheless.Images Courtesy: Anurag Anand
