On a quiet Sunday morning in Bengaluru, strangers gather around a blank wall, sleeves rolled up, paint-splattered within minutes. Phones are forgotten, small talk turns into laughter and by the end of three hours, there is a heart-to-art conversation both on the wall and within the people standing before it.
The brain behind this initiative is a doctor-turned- artist Bhoomika Ananth, who found her voice on concrete walls. What began as a deeply personal act of survival during the pandemic has today grown into Wall as Your Canvas, a city-wide movement where art becomes therapy, walls become classrooms and strangers become collaborating artistes. “Painting became the only thing that kept me grounded. It was how I coped and how I stayed sane during a time when everything else felt out of control,” she shares.
The turning point came when both her parents were hospitalised with COVID. With canvases running out, Ananth began painting on her own body, before realising that even that surface felt limiting. “I understood that my body wasn’t a big enough space for what I needed to express, and that’s when the idea of painting on walls occurred to me,” she recalls. What began within the confines of her parents’ home soon expanded outward when a friend offered her a wall at his father’s office. “That wall made me realise murals could transform spaces and give them identity, while also giving me an identity I hadn’t explored,” she adds.
Ananth’s engagement with mural art soon took on a social dimension while working with NGOs in government schools, where she noticed a recurring visual language dominated by cartoon characters. “Almost every school had the same imagery – Doraemon, Chhota Bheem. While familiar, these visuals added very little long-term value to a child’s imagination,” she says. When her suggestions for aspirational and career-oriented themes were repeatedly dismissed, she decided to take matters into her own hands.
That decision led to the birth of Wall as Your Canvas. “Instead of asking people to simply volunteer their time, I wanted them to come and learn a skill – how to actually paint a wall, understand techniques, and work with intention,” Ananth explains. The first mural under this model was a 15-foot-tall astronaut painted by 15 participants at a government school in Indiranagar, a symbolic beginning that set the tone for what followed.
Held twice a week, the workshops unfold over three hours, beginning with icebreakers and a short introduction to painting fundamentals. “When people are taught how to control a brush and understand colour and strokes, they move from simply filling a surface to actually creating,” Ananth says, adding that painting side by side with strangers naturally encourages interaction. “When you’re working in close spaces, conversation becomes inevitable, and that’s where genuine human connections begin,” she notes.
Over the past three years, more than 7,000 people have participated in Wall as Your Canvas. The impact is evident not only in the murals left behind but in the emotional responses of those involved. “Nearly 95 per cent of participants tell us the best part of the workshop was switching off – from their phones, their worries and the chaos of daily life,” she says. Some connections have lasted far beyond the walls, with several team members and even married couples emerging from these sessions.
Now this journey has become a deeply personal one for Ananth, as she notes, “Medicine taught me how to save lives, but art taught me how to stay alive.” As she continues to balance personal projects, social commentary murals like her Stranger Things series, and large-scale community initiatives, her purpose remains clear – to create spaces where people feel free to express, connect and belong.