No two facets of a jewel are exactly alike. But when they work together, they create a scintillating fire. No two faces that Mother Nature turns towards those who behold her are the same, but they are all wonderful and magical.
Namita’s art takes many forms, many facets, many faces, and each of them is an expression of the same creative soul. Her Instagram page is a reflection of every facet of her art: paintings, pole dance video snippets, musings on nature, yoga, celebrations of different corners of the world, and activism through art combine to form a homogeneous whole, one that is as vibrant and colorful and alive and inspiring as the natural world she so powerfully depicts.
Nature
Namita’s art is as much a celebration of the natural world as is the most beautiful flower, or the most intricately whorled seashell, or the most brilliantly patterned insect making its way through the undergrowth of the most ancient forest.
And always there is color. Bright and intoxicating and real and unforgettable.
And it’s not just when she’s on a hike in the impenetrable jungle that Namita finds strange and wonderful slices of Mother Earth that she is inspired to immortalize through her art. It happens even in the middle of the concrete jungle, often when she least expects it.
The way flowers push through concrete and metal to bask in their slice of the sun. The other day I saw two kids trying to get their cycle across a ditch and there was something so earnest in their clumsiness. When you have an active sense of wonder, you run into fascination so much more and it just feeds and grows that sense of wonder each time.
And a lot of this art feels like it lives in a textbook in an alternate dimension, one where teaching resources are made to be loved and engaged with, rather than feared or ignored.
Yesterday I walked into a mall (of all places) and saw an encyclopedia on the natural world. I opened it and entered a world of seashells and insects and everything in between. I learned that one of my favorite seashells is called Precious Wentletrap which is German for spiral staircase.
And these summonings of the deep-rooted magic that lives all around us often carry with them messages that we need to act on before it is too late.
This seascape, all bright colors and deep blues and very deep blues and delicate hues, is an acrylic painting on a very unusual medium: a dustbin that had seen service for years and years. It is visually arresting; you cannot look away. But even more wonderful is the message beneath the surface: of the trash that we discard into the world which is much more expansive than ours, choking the seas and all who live in them.
A lot of Namita’s nature-inspired paintings, whether they’re full ecosystems like this one or delicate single flowers, look magical. And they work so well as magnets to draw people to the natural world because one realizes, after looking up the original slices of reality which inspired the paintings, that Nature is just as magical. That enchanted beauty is transmuted and added to and borrowed from when it makes its way to the canvas. Or to the repurposed dustbin.
This piece is a portal to rediscovering childlike wonder. It takes you back to the days when you could look at a really cool fish or a fascinatingly textured reef outcrop or a really blue blue, and makes you simultaneously want to know more about this deep magic and be kinder to those beings that exude it from every pore.
We live inside these concrete boxes and get from one building to another via metal boxes, it’s easy to be cut off from the endless marvels of the natural world. Everytime I garden, I run into delight in some unexpectable shape or form. The same garden and yet it always surprises me. Even just looking through photos of gemstones, seashells, fungi and insects online does wonders to my creative health and feeds my sense of wonder. I do feel a lot of the despair and lack of imagination and loss of vitality can be traced back to being cut off from one’s sense of wonder, or not having fed it.
And the message is an essential part of Namita’s more elaborate nature pieces.
“Timeless Waters to Waterless Times” makes a powerful statement about managing water access, about the insane fact that most of our little blue planet is water, and there are still hundreds of millions who have never known anything but thirst. It needs no words: one look at it and your mind travels down every pathway of everything you have ever known or experienced about water scarcity.
Perhaps the greatest tribute to Namita’s artistry in this piece is that, even though it depicts a bleak world (or the coming apocalypse) where drinking water is thicker than blood, where parched throats rattle dryly as they crave precious moisture that is just out of reach, where oil is no longer the predominant fluid over which wars are fought, there is still beauty. The lonely moon and the wispy clouds and the inky clouds in the top half of the hourglass are beautiful in an icy way, and you almost wish you could see them in real life. At least until the real horror of the Waterless Times hellscape hits you.
And there is something about the universality of illustrations from nature that makes us all stand and stare.
I relate to plants on an energetic level so that shows in how I depict them, I suppose. The way you feel about the subject is what makes its way into and leaves a mark all over the painting.
A good rendition of a plant, if you ask me, does not begin and end with technical/anatomical precision. That is one part of it. I want the energy of the plant to jump out from the page and move the viewer. That is how I feel looking at a plant. Like they have things to say to us and they will say them in their way, it is for us to sharpen our senses and be good listeners.
In yoga we often say that the way an asana looks is not the point, that is only the tip of the iceberg. The way an asana feels is what is important. I feel that way about plants too.
Movement Art | Pole
All art takes those who experience it into other worlds. Often, those worlds are unimaginably distant (while still being wonderful); places we wistfully wish we could inhabit while acknowledging that even a few moments spent in them through the power of a painting or a piece of music are a huge privilege.
But when Namita posts little windows into her pole dance practice in the form of short reels, they transport you into her life as a movement artist. You feel the thrill of mastering an impossible-looking trick after days and sometimes weeks of practice, the ecstasy of overcoming gravity and feeling infinite, the agony of attempting something that isn’t quite there and sliding down to the floor in an ungraceful heap, and the transcendent joy of being a goddess. And you feel inspired – to do something that makes your soul sing, even if in a very small way.
On the surface, pole dance has very little in common with visual art. But when you look closer, they are both facets of Namita’s artistry: she brings the same sense of adventure and unfettered exploration to both. Both start in the world that we inhabit and trail off into other realms of magic. Both make you want to do things, to give fulfillment to half-formed desires and aspirations and thoughts.
And both are accessible, and give rise to the desire to know more. You might look at a drawing of a mushroom and hunger to know more about mycelial networks. Equally, you might look at one of dozens of reels documenting pole dance moves with intriguing names like the Vortex, the Butterfly, or Jasmine, and resolve to one day try them based only on how great their titles are.
Writing as Art
Namita’s posts on social media are accompanied by captions that are exquisitely written. It is easy to miss them while you’re admiring the visual art, or the movement artistry. After all, one does not find a diamond and then immediately expect to find a ruby. But there they are: hundreds of little ruby easter eggs that feel like pomegranate arils. Here are some of our favorites, complete with hyperlinks so you can go down rabbit holes of word art and visual art and movement art.
- “…this gorgeous hanging forest of a creeper that decided to take over the square.”
- “The more I dive into the world of bugs the more they look like permission slips to be as bizarre as I want to be”
- “I like this half-done version with the possibilities still suggesting themselves while she’s in no hurry to pick one”
- “I feel in my bones how non-negotiably precious a safe home is.”
- “Aerial reminds me of climbing and swinging from banyan tree roots over ditches as a kid. Every bruise and scrape felt totally worth the kick of swinging in the air.”
- “No “away” in throw away”
- “The way water and light and color interact is endlessly fascinating”
- “I like the way all the individual asymmetries cobble together these two images in the final result”
- “interference paints are a hoot and a half”
- “Here’s to new chapters in new cities and finding our favorite seashells as we wade through life.”
“Everything in the jungle luring you deeper inside and into the wilderness of your own psyche.”
I read a good deal and I fall in love with the way some writers use words, certain turns of phrases. Those show up in different ways when I write. I love words but I love the world of images more. Images go straight for the subconscious, words ask for keys first. Words require the rational, conscious, honorable part of your brain to make sense of them first, before they can really get under your skin. And give you that feeling of the top of your head being chopped off, like Emily Dickinson said about poetry. The way I experience them is that words are well-mannered, while images have no sense of propriety. So words don’t come to me as spontaneously and wildly as images, but I do have a good working acquaintance with words, I’d like to think. I really enjoy reading and I love what I heard someone say once, I think it was Robert Bly. He said good language is a pleasure of the flesh. When I read or write, I want the words to land like a pleasure of the flesh. A well-written sentence feels like music to me. I live in the world of images though, and words are like the elegant grown-up house next door I hope to keep visiting as long as they keep letting me.
Namita’s Story
This section has two purposes. Its primary aim is to present a few pivotal moments that shaped Namita as an artist and as a person. It is also an extension of the previous section; the words she wrote were so perfect that all our efforts to paraphrase them fell flat.
Lots of rejection actually has been pivotal for me as an artist. The common thread being that when people didn’t appreciate my art, or said it’s not good enough for their gallery or some such thing, there was something in me that saw their rejection, in all humility, as a “them problem”. That there’s something in them that is sadly unable to connect with the wonder and magic that I know for a fact I have been a vessel for in my art. Having felt it, I know it for a fact. When you’re creating from the unavoidable current of your aliveness, there’s nothing in the world that can take that away from you. And if you’re not creating from that electricity, then no amount of external recognition will make up for the lack of creative fulfilment.
I was 20, looking for a gallery to exhibit my very first series of paintings I’d titled Alive. I had a college friend with me and we found a nice fancy-ish art gallery in the heart of Bangalore. The gallery lady took one look at my painting and said “oh this is for calendars, we don’t exhibit this kind of art.”
My friend later in the car told me she hoped that rejection wouldn’t make me stop painting. I felt the sting of rejection like any young artist would, but what I felt more was wow how dead is this person inside for not being able to appreciate beauty. Might sound arrogant, but I think as an artist you’d better have that healthy arrogance of knowing unshakeably that your art is worthwhile.
I was maybe 21, living at my grandfather’s place because my father was busy being a raging alcoholic those years. One afternoon my father showed up drunk and mad that I was refusing to live with him. He threatened to destroy my paintings and I had no idea how to respond or what to make of that. There was a darkness in him that had surfaced in that moment for me to see clear as day. As artists and as people I feel it is important to witness darkness, whether in oneself or someone else, not to bypass it or pretend it doesn’t exist. You don’t get to really appreciate the light until you’ve held eye contact with the darkness without flinching. To be able to look into the abyss without falling into it, that is the skilled way. And to shield yourself from it while standing up to it. I’ve had my share of moments like that in life and one eventually learns to see in the dark.
April 2020. I was at home in Mysore, the pandemic lockdown had begun. In a rare moment of clarity I’d deleted all social media apps from my phone. Something in me wanted to make something. I had barely drawn or painted anything in years. I sat down with my fountain pen and a blank sheet of paper to sketch a place I’d photographed a decade ago in Bombay. It took me 45 minutes and I really surprised myself with that sketch. It had a spiral staircase that was especially tricky to navigate with my ink pen not allowing any erasing. I looked at the finished result amazed that I still had it in me to draw like that. The skill hadn’t walked away after all those years of neglecting it. I just felt so moved that I still had it in me. That night I was going to walk right back into the world of making art, following my creative impulse, showing up to it consistently and seeing where that takes me.
Dec 2025. I was in one of those very-rich-people apartments in Manhattan exhibiting my paintings for a fundraising event organized by a human rights organisation based in NYC. About 70 people had shown up. An auctioneer from Sotheby’s was auctioning my art and I watched as she riled up the crowd, people out-bidding each other over paintings that I made back home in Mysore, alone in my studio. It just felt so surreal. Art has a way of expanding your sense of possibilities, both on the canvas and off the canvas. You never know where your art might lead you.
Awareness and Change
Namita’s art speaks to the soul of the viewer. It also speaks about causes close to her heart, and one prominent example is her Colonialism and the Climate Crisis series, created with ICAAD (International Center for Advocates Against Discrimination). It will be exhibited at the United Nations Headquarters in June and July 2026.
Back in Dec 2021 I saw a post on facebook about a call for artists to make art on any human rights subject. It was by a human rights organization called ICAAD – International Center for Advocates Against Discrimination. I’d been thinking and reading about colonialism as the cause of the climate crisis so I sat down to write the proposal one night after an exhausting day. I had some anger in me that day which I was able to channel into writing a strong proposal. A week later they wrote back telling me I’d been selected along with about 4 other artists from different parts of the world. They had us complete a two-month human rights course before we began working. It is a dark topic and the course had a lot of heavy reading material which I needed frequent breaks from, so it did feel really intense overall. I did a few art therapy sessions to help me get into the groove of making lots of art in a short span.
The virtual gallery can be viewed on the ICAAD website. The visuals are powerful, and the trademark color that suffuses so much of Namita’s work is arresting now; you cannot look away, even when you are horrified at what we are doing to our planet, at the harrowing sight of lakes on fire, of a big blue cosmic flower as a symbol of hope.
A few months after I began working on the series, the 6th IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) report came out in April 2022, naming colonialism as the historical and ongoing driver of the climate crisis.
I completed the series of 8 paintings in a few months and it was very well-received by everyone at the organisation. Which was, of course, a huge relief. I remember saying in my speech at the fundraising event in Manhattan that when we can’t wrap our heads around something, art helps us wrap our hearts around it. Quite a few people came up to me that night sharing the same sentiment.
And the series continues to turn heads and – more importantly – fill them with important messages in 2026, as it prepares to be shown at the United Nations in New York this June and July.
I’ve had people share really interesting interpretations of my art that I could not have thought of, and it seems clear to me more than ever that art is a verb. A conversation. As an artist, I throw a pebble in the lake of your psyche when I have you take in a painting. There’s no commanding or even predicting where the ripples lead you, but it sure is interesting to watch.
We cannot wait to see where Namita’s art goes next, as it branches and evolves and grows with the persistence of a plant whose full, glorious flowering will not be denied.
Links
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/radicallyeverafter/.
Art Store: https://artbynamita.dm2buy.com/.
Interviews, Workshops, News: https://linktr.ee/namita_nefarious.