Artist Divya Singh on painting light, solitude and the fragility of human life

Divya Singh, a 31-year-old artist from Delhi, first sold her artwork in 2019 but didn't feel happy about it. Her first sale, a brown canvas of her mother's room, made her cry and she couldn't let go of it. Singh is portrayed as casual and carefree, with oversized clothing, bangles, rings, shimmery nails, and an orange pimple patch.

Her paintings at the Shrine gallery, part of her solo show Sounds from the Attic, depict intimate moments from life that are often unnoticed. Singh is an introvert who has always drawn to communicate or spend time with her sister, but eventually, drawing became her way of living and expressing herself. Her work, Slowly/ Drift, exhibited at Delhi Contemporary Art Week in 2022, shows a pair of feet hanging from a bus seat.

The painting evokes a sense of escape or respite after a hard day. Anahita Taneja, co-founder of Shrine Empire, notes that Singh's work is haunting due to its imagery hovering between memory and imagination. Her art has become increasingly valuable, ranging from Rs 25,000 to Rs 12 lakh depending on the scale and complexity. One of Singh's works, Vestal's Dream II, features a window that breathes as a gust of wind passes through it.

She captures the fragility of human life and the cost of peace in her paintings, such as Tell Mother I'm Home/ Afterlife, which features a sleeping neighbor. Singh's luminous paintings, like The Softness Of Your Dreams X Paris, Texas, convey the depth of solitude and the joy of existing in a blind spot. To achieve this effect, Singh uses a laborious process of painting three times with different media, allowing light to bounce off each layer, creating a lit-from-within effect.

Singh's carefree appearance contrasts with the contemplative nature of her work, much like the light and darkness in her paintings. She sees darkness as a different form of light and experiences a deep connection with it.