Divya Pamnani

Aware of the vast and rich legacy of Indian Miniature Paintings, Divya Pamnani is engaging with the tradition, crafting a unique visual language, and painting on themes that are personal yet universal, carefully referencing select imagery to convey meaning and symbolism through her work.

The techniques she learned under Master Artist Mahaveer Swami in Rajasthan have been extremely impactful to her recent body of work. It offers a coming together of the medium and the virtues she aspires to imbibe in her life in that the process requires a conscious slowing down; the art-making is meditative and time-consuming, demanding dexterity, patience and striving for perfection. The slowing down allows self-discovery through the observing of passing thoughts and bringing them back to present details, making room for subconsciously guided split-level decisions in the space between thoughts and contact with paper.

Similar to traditional miniature artists, in the making of her work Divya uses extremely fine squirrel hair brushes (i.e. qalams), natural hand-ground stone pigments and handmade paper (i.e. wasli). She supplements the matte opacity of stone pigments with vibrant inks and gouache, which allows her to play with opacity and translucency in the handling of colour.

A surreal beauty emerges in Divya’s work; she proposes something sublime and mature in hue, expressing balance and flow in pattern repetition, using colours in ways that are striking yet soothing. In an ongoing series, she extends her vision to contemplative yet whimsical landscapes that offer circular realms of escape. As a deep-sea diver the circularity of unending underwater life offers her a contemplation on our personal and universal existential attempts, of ordering the microcosm of our lives with the macrocosm of the universe’s life. This is the essence of her work, an endeavour to bring positivity, beauty and joy into this world.