“If winter comes, can spring be far behind...” reads the invitation to the exhibition, Colours: An Exhibition of Little Canvases (Debovasha, March 21-April 6). A chill must indeed have run down the spines of the organizers when a nationwide lockdown was announced soon after it started, restricting people from visiting galleries. But Debovasha was among the first galleries in the city to take their exhibition online — the show was available on Facebook — seamlessly transitioning from the real to the virtual.

Holding out the promise of a verdant spring was Ganesh Haloi’s depiction of lush squares and rectangles of the paddy fields and sparkling water bodies, imbued with a great sense of serenity. The minimalist appeal of Haloi’s works bears evidence that the artist’s imagination cannot be restricted by the contours of the canvas (8 X 8 inches). Scale cannot limit Sanat Kar’s sprite-like creatures with huge eyes expressing both fear and wonderment, either — drawn with bold strokes, they huddle together like friends who share many secrets.

Mysteries also lie concealed behind the closed eyes of Sushobhan Adhikary’s women and in Shuvaprasanna’s depiction of Gandhi and Tagore, neither of whom is willing to look the viewer in the eye. Tanmay Banerjee, on the other hand, refuses to hide the cruelty that is apparent in the sadistic grin on the face of the person who has split open a jackfruit.

While the power of great art is such that it can touch the viewer even when the latter is on the other side of a sterile computer screen, there are some things that can only be experienced in person. Thick ridges of impasto paint on Laluprasad Shaw’s bright flowers that are just about discernible on the monitor would have given the flora a life-like leathery texture that an image of the canvas just cannot convey. The stark juxtaposition of colours by Atin Basak or the textural grain in Alay Ghoshal’s canvases, too, are lost in transition.