Nirmala Pillai

Nirmala is a self taught artist who kept her passion for painting alive through her hectic career as a Civil service officer with the central government, and is now a full time artist. She likes to innovate and experiment with colours and materials creating figures and landscapes that capture one’s imagination, creating dreamscapes in abstract and figurative lines. The poet in her creates word pictures in her paintings. She develops concepts and ideas in a tangible way to draw you into the secret world of the artist.

Using mainly acrylic colours and mixed media, she creates innovative art from ideas, bringing them alive with warm, bright colours. Energy and power radiates from her canvases as she expresses her belief of healing the mind through colours and images, from the living energy of the painter to the viewer who can connect and understand each painting.

Nirmala has held more than twelve solo and group exhibitions across India. Her works have been exhibited at India International Centre, India Habitat Cenre, HUDCO Art Gallery, AIFACS New Delhi. In Mumbai she has held exhibitions at Nehru Centre, Kamalnayan Bajaj Gallery, Museum gallery, Kalaghoda, etc. In the south, she has exhibited at the Lalit Kala Akademi, Chennai and the Trivandrum Museum gallery among many others. Her paintings reside with Individual and Institutional collectors in India and abroad.

She is also a writer and poet, having published two books of poems and one collection of short stories called ‘The Singing Earth’. Her poems have been published in various anthologies and literary magazines. Her stories have also won prizes in competitions and have been shortlisted for awards.