For nearly three decades, Pune-based artist Neena Singh led parallel lives. One followed the structure and discipline of a civil servant, while the other unfolded through colour and texture. It was only in her late 30s that she began painting seriously, teaching herself to translate her feelings into form. What began as a personal refuge has since grown into a deeply intuitive artistic practice, one that balances reflection with expression.
This personal journey now finds expression in her latest exhibition, Echoes of Becoming, at Delhi’s Bikaner House — her first solo in the capital. The show brings together 50 works on canvas and paper, all executed in acrylic, created over the last five years and charting her path of renewal. Curated by artists Aditya Shirke and Rahul Kumar, the exhibition unfolds like an intimate diary of transformation. Each canvas captures moments of emergence and dissolution, as if the artist herself were caught mid-thought, mid-breath, and mid-becoming.
“I came to art because I was exhausted with my thoughts,” Neena shares. “Words were inadequate, which is why painting became a channel.” Her abstractions draw from Nature, not as literal landscapes but as emotional states: the flow of water, the restlessness of wind, or the warmth of light. “Anything from Nature or the landscape serves as a point of departure,” she says. “It’s not about depicting, it’s about expanding that thought.”
Nature, intuition and the language of colour
Neena’s journey as a professional artist began in 2006 with a solo exhibition Serendipity at Mumbai’s iconic Jehangir Art Gallery. Though self-taught, her intellectual curiosity has always shaped her practice. She holds a Master’s and MPhil in Sociology and earned her Doctor of Philosophy from Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, where her research focussed on linguistic identity and Indian nationalism.
This engagement with ideas of belonging, and expression continues to inform her art, giving her abstractions a sense of meaning that feels both intimate and universal. For Neena, Nature is never mere scenery; it is a state of being. The canvases in Echoes of Becoming reflect this sensibility: soft gradations of blue, gentle golds, and earthy ochres evoke moods more than objects.
While many works shimmer in these bright, expansive tones, there are some pieces from 2023-2024 in greys and blacks, revealing inner turmoil and introspection. Certain paintings from 2020 even carry a photographic quality, capturing fleeting visual impressions with an immediacy that contrasts with her more lyrical abstractions. Yet all of her paintings share an emotional transparency.
“There’s a sense of unpretentiousness in her work,” notes Aditya. “ The best kind of art is open to interpretation, where the viewer brings their own meaning.”
Her process follows a rhythm of emergence and erasure. She rarely begins with sketches or plans; instead, she approaches a blank surface instinctively, placing marks, splashes, and strokes until something begins to breathe. “It’s a process of building and destroying,” she explains. “Each layer carries both creation and dissolution.”
Neena’s abstractions recall, in spirit, the atmospheric canvases of Turner and the contemplative silences of Gaitonde. The influences of SH Raza’s vibrant geometry and Gaitonde’s meditative restraint are also evident, not as imitation but as inheritance. “I owe many debts to these masters,” Neena reflects. “Their spirit lingers in how I approach colour and stillness.”
Freedom through becoming
Her creative voice is deeply intertwined with her life story. Growing up in small towns across North India, in a time and family where a woman’s choices were often constrained, Neena first discovered freedom in the pages of books, and later, in the act of painting. “Painting was how I broke away from boundaries that felt unfair,” she reflects. “It gave me space to breathe.”
Echoes of Becoming is a meditation on what it means to exist in moments that are never fixed but always in flux. Neena’s paintings dwell in the spaces between thought and feeling, capturing the quiet tension of moments in motion. In them, freedom is not an abstract idea but a lived experience — fragile, luminous, and ever-renewing.
The exhibition is on until November 17 11am to 7pm at Main Art Gallery, Bikaner House, New Delhi
Published – November 14, 2025 11:02 am IST
