“She shows a lot in Japan,” we are told, as we walk into the idyllic order of Maite Delteil’s canvases at Art Musings. Perhaps this statement is something to hold on to in this journey through manicured and pattern-bound orchards and woods populated by a multitude of small birds and mostly serene people.

Delteil, who lives in France and India, creates a landscape in Enchanted that doesn’t belong to any one place. It speaks instead to a meditative garden brought out by the peculiarly ordered trees, with their trunks and branches exploding into cherries and apples and other rounded fruits. The repetitive roundness of the fruit that overwhelms her trees or the detail in her brushstrokes suggesting density of snow or foliage, are gateways to these fantastical lands in which her subjects remain suspended in a dreamlike trance. Delteil also posits a passage of time, and the decay and dissolution it brings, not through conventional images of cracks and growth – rather, her subjects are an interplay of ages, sexes and positioning. In “Mother & Child”, two teenage girls watch a mother about to pick up her daughter, without expression, as if coming to terms with ghosts of the past and the future. In “Game”, two girls are caught mid-run, pointing in opposite directions, amidst multi-coloured foliage and a flock of pigeons at their feet. Delteil also uses dramatically coloured backgrounds – pink grounds in “Autumn”, the solid red sky in “The End of the Day” or the graded yellows in “The Exquisite Hour” and “The Golden Sky” – to etch out her surreal sanctuary.

The sanctuary is where the viewer can contemplate the passage of time cocooned in the comfort of an unthreatening un-reality. The two indoor works, “Hide and Seek” and “The Bride” point out stages of a woman’s life – a child, a mother and the in-between bride. In “Hide & Seek”, a child counts in front of a woman who stands half-hidden among large flower arrangements with her back to a blank mirror. “The Bride” meanwhile, is simply a round-faced young woman in bridal attire – her clothes not only white but conservatively fashioned – posing with finches, one of whom sits on her hand. These images perhaps drive home Delteil’s themes of the permanence of change and the passage of time, better than other work in the series.

Delteil is definitely an accomplished painter, as seen from the repetition and detail in “Day and Night” or her set of four paintings of seasons, where she replicates a landscape at various times. The exhibition will also see the release of a book on the painter, her work and excerpts from her life with her husband, fellow artist Sakti Burman and their daughter Maya. 

Enchanted opens on Sat Jan 12 at Art Musings.