For retired IAS officer Vandana Krishna, art was the quiet companion that stayed with her through the intensity of her bureaucratic career. Since childhood, she gravitated toward painting, gallery hopping, and music — though the idea of becoming an artist never crossed her mind. “The thought never even occurred to me that I could exhibit my paintings or hold an exhibition,” she says.
Over the years, she returned to painting in the slivers of time she found — on weekends, late at night after work. That rhythm deepened during the lockdown, when working from home created pockets of stillness. By the time she retired in 2022, painting had stopped being a hobby and become a calling.
Now, at Annexe Art Gallery, India International Centre, her first solo exhibition in Delhi, ‘Reflections’, offers viewers a window into her world: mesmerising cityscapes of Mumbai — rain-soaked streets, skyscrapers, beaches, and mirrored distortions — captured with a tenderness that feels both observational and deeply personal.
The idea for this series emerged during a moment in Mumbai traffic. Caught in a monsoon downpour, she watched the city blur and distort across her car windshield. “That was the moment I really wanted to paint,” she recalls.
Mumbai, where she has lived for decades, remains her dominant muse. Her works oscillate between the stillness and the movement of the city — its people, moods, and shifting landscapes. She also travels widely, across India and abroad, and the photographs she takes on these trips often become seeds for her next canvas.
But it is Mumbai that calls her back again and again. “The rainy season of Mumbai — I love the rains,” she says. “Even though they inconvenience people with flooding, the greenery, the clean green colours, the water reflections… and plus, it’s by the sea.”
A self-taught artist, Krishna learned through trial, error, and close observation. She spent years sharpening her eye by visiting galleries and studying the masters. Influenced by artists such as Vincent van Gogh, Claude Monet, M F Husain, and F N Souza, her canvases balance bold strokes with soft, nuanced tones. Art, she says, became her anchor — a calm space amid the mental demands of public service. “It helps you de-stress and get away from it all, not overthink and be in the moment. As a bureaucrat, you’re always thinking about policies, strategies, and implementation.”
Painting is also, for her, a way to rediscover beauty. “Art is about freedom — freedom from expectations, from social norms, from who you’re supposed to be,” she says, adding that it’s an impulsive, instinctive act: responding to an image she loves, a moment she wants to hold, trusting that the viewer might find joy in it too.
On view at Annexe Art Gallery, India International Centre till November 30