Nilisha Born in 1996 and brought up in Mumbai, completed her Bachelors in Fine Art (B.F.A) in 2018 and Masters in Fine Art (M.F.A) in the year 2020 specializing in Portraiture from Sir J.J School of Art, Mumbai. From an early age, she developed a profound appreciation for the subject of portraiture due to its inherent ability to communicate beyond words and through the human body. As a student of Portraiture, it became evident that the entire body serves to narrate experiences and expressions of existence. This was a fascinating realization for her. She said...
"My early work was a direct representation of people I observed in my day to day life. It consisted of an academic play between the figure, the background and the foreground, dividing the space in a way that the ‘portrait’ became a focal point within the paintings. Over the last two years, however, I attempted to reveal the figures in a broader context beyond their anatomy. The human body is a canvas for past and present emotions. While exploring the anatomical presence of humans, I was intrigued to sense and reveal their psychological presence. I sought to give a visual form to abstract emotions such as experiences, memories, and internal turmoil that are embodied within the human body. Through this, I attempted to bridge the gap between the observer and the observed.
In my current work, I am taking this concept further by exploring the identities of my subjects. The diverse personalities of my subjects intrigued me; they became inadvertent muses channeling the concepts of my paintings.
As a student of psychology during my higher secondary education, human behavior and the psyche have always been my subjects of interest. Identity roles are formed as a result of past experiences, memories and are a product of the surrounding environment. These roles keep changing and evolving with time. My paintings seek to capture this shift in identities through oil painting on linen canvases. I often overlap and superimpose multiple figures portraying the same individual to represent the multiple personalities that each person has within themselves. These personalities reveal themselves in different identity roles related to work, social life, and family. I explore these diverse personalities of a single person through objects or situations that best describe them and represent them as visual forms in my figurative compositions.
I constantly experiment with different mediums, varieties of compositions and diverse ways of execution that visually and conceptually support my intended expressions. My artistic journey is to create paintings that speak to my world. It is a journey of going out into the world but also a journey of going ‘within’ myself and my subjects.