Woman Portrait Series. Acrylic paint on textured paper. 

I began working on these portraits In April 2021, inspired by the slight but confident smiles of these women from rural India. While Covid was busy painting a grim reality in the outside world, I began searching the inner worlds of these faces. The abandon yet reassuring grace with which they presented themselves was inspiring. While I worked on one face after the other, there were moments when I realized that these could have been faces of men too. The reason, these women too, go through daily rigours of life under the scorching sun. It makes them tough. Over generations they have been subject to a harsh physically intense lifestyle, of manual labor or farming. But eventually, the feminine shines through, a slight gesture of the hand or the sometimes shy and sometimes sparkling eyes, tell the story of a woman. What is also intrinsic to these women is the feeling of completeness. A soft confidence that speaks for itself, and is complete in itself.⠀There are 10 portraits in the series. ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀