SLUMBERING HOLLOW
AN ARCHIVE · 2020 – 2022
Hi, I'm Deepansh.
Slumbering Hollow is my rendition of the world I've personally lived in and stepped on. I make minimal art pieces from pictures I've taken and the places I've visited.
Each piece here is a place in time, has a story and stores a memory. Welcome to the hollow, hope you have a wonderful time.
This piece is very close to my heart. There's an irony in the name and how the piece looks; the name is a misnomer. The reason is simple. I had a specific memory and a specific time of my life in mind when I made this one, and I think that's about as much as I'll say about it.
This pair of archaic antennae defined my childhood. They're fixed on the terrace of my family home in Dehradun. I often say I grew up watching the sky change behind them. The sunset in this piece comes from a particular day from the time when I was still in high school.
Of course, here's yet another piece with hills and snow! Thing is, the more you grow up in the valley, the more you start to see these hills in different shades. I've seen this place in the brownest of browns and the bluest of blues. You can find the brown version on the Instagram feed too, actually!
Athirapilly Waterfalls in Kerala was the last thing to check on our inventory, and while we could only squeeze a day trip to them, I wondered how awesome that waterfall would look at night. That's where this one comes from! It's an extrapolation of what I saw by the time the sun had started going down.
I volunteered once in a remote village in Telangana, India. We were a team of six guys teaching language and other skills to school children. A sort of routine built where we'd conduct classes during the day, and by the evening, we'd sit by the humongous lake right behind the village. In fact, the village is named Nallavagu, which (from what the children told us) means blank lake or large lake. I'm not sure about that, but I'm sure of the fact that I've never seen better sunsets in my life.
Out of the infinitely long list of the most beautiful things I've seen in my life, stargazing in Jaisalmer has to be in the top three. I've never seen so many stars in the sky! Fun fact: the idea of stars is what inspired the noisy skies in every Slumbering Hollow piece. This was the first piece I made under this project.
There's a particular time of the year when Dehradun skies are extremely pink. There's a particular point on the way to Mussoorie, the nearby hill station, where you can see pastel hills and skies during that time. If you know it, you know it.
Life can often throw a lot of punches at you. When that happens, the best thing you can do is fight back. The second best thing you can do is go to the beach. That's what I did a few years ago when I was stuck in a rut. Some friends and I spent the night at the beach, drinking and laughing about it all. Eventually, it was daybreak, in all senses of the word.
Golden Beach actually came from a rather bad painting I made of a beach I visited in Goa. The painting was from memory so I took a lot of freedom with it. When I made it into a place in the Slumbering Hollow, I took more creative freedom. This very sandy piece is the result. There's some water too.
I once lived a very Peter Parker life in the city of chill which is how I dub Pune. There was a crane you could always see from my workplace. Every evening, I'd exit the building and the crane would be there. The colours are specific to a Spider-Man-esque palette here, and trust me when I tell you, it was a very Peter Parker life.
When you're born in the valley, you often find creeks and streams that most people don't know about. At least, you feel that way. Thing is, everyone knows the best spots. It's a collective secret kept safely. No one will tell you where they are if you don't belong. No one will share the golden hour with you until you belong.
My friends and I went for a weekend retreat to Mussoorie and Landour. We had taken the scenic route for lunch i.e. the Camel's Back Road but were getting exhausted until one of us went, "Hey, look, you can see the snowy mountains from here!"
Monsoons in the valley are both fantastic and annoying. I went for a hike to Shikhar Falls with some friends on a random weekend when it began raining. It rained on our plans, too: half the route was barricaded. It was a good day still. That was our morning on the Drizzly Trail.
There's something about autumn you can't ignore. You know it's about to get colder but it feels warmer than it has the entire year. Autumn and Octobers in general are the annual hug many of us need by the time they arrive. On a random evening in autumn, this view saved me from myself. Auburn skies in Dehradun have an unparalleled healing in them.
When you're locked down into your tiny apartment on the seventh floor in the city where nothing ever happens, you don't do much. You read in the balcony in the evenings and sometimes, the sky turns to a peachy plum colour, reminding you things are going to be okay.