Walk into the lobby of Park Hyatt Hyderabad, and your eyes are instantly drawn upwards. The ceiling blossoms into a painted cosmos: lotus petals unfurl in layers, birds wheel across the blue canopy, and surreal figures emerge among the foliage.
Elsewhere, in Kochi’s Port Muziriz, a Tribute Portfolio Hotel, the walls tell another tale. Fishermen in charcoal and gold leaf row across waters heavy with memory, their oars glinting as natural light shifts through the day.
These spaces are not merely decorated; they are transformed into narrative environments. At once lush and dreamlike, the mural blurs the line between interior design and storytelling. The hand behind these works belongs to Sachin Samson, a Kochi-born artist who has made murals the medium through which interiors breathe and speak.
“I have always been interested in drawing and painting,” Sachin recalls. “Not formally at first. My father, Samson Davis (a Zoology professor), was also an artist. He wasn’t a professional, but was part of Kerala Kalapeedam, an art circle founded in Kerala in 1980, where artists like Kaladharan and Bose Krishnamachari would regularly meet. I grew up surrounded by that. I remember sketching elephants I saw at the temple, actors from movies, and even people on the street. A tendency to recreate what I experienced.”
That instinct carried him to MIT in Pune. “In the first year itself, when everything was drawing and perspective and less theory, I found my place. It felt like meeting my tribe. This clutch of creative people, new cultures, and even music I had never heard before. More than academics, it was an exchange of energy,” Sachin says.
Then came animation. “I thought it would be fun. Just drawing,” he laughs. “But animation is very technical. You’re studying anatomy, physics, and kinematics. Twenty-four frames per second, all drawn by hand. It was demanding, but my professors encouraged me to experiment, and so I did, with claymation, 3D software, puppet animation, and more. That blend of traditional drawing and digital skills shaped me.”
After a stint as a character designer at a gaming studio in Bengaluru, Sachin felt restless. “I didn’t want to just make assets for a game or direct ads. I wanted to tell my own stories,” he recalls.
Sachin returned to sketching and painting full-time. Sitting in cafes, sketching passers-by, he found a meditative rhythm. “I would watch people, capture their gestures, their silences. It was like travelling through their emotions. It became a daily ritual. Instagram gave me visibility, and soon, small commissions came in,” he says.
That rhythm found scale when he encountered the energy of the Kochi-Muziris Biennale. Inspired by its installations and street art, he painted his first mural during the third edition of the art festival in December 2016.
“A mural is like a sketchbook blown up on a wall. It was spontaneous, but once I started, I knew this was my path,” Sachin says.
From Kochi’s walls, he moved to larger commissions. Some examples besides Park Hyatt Hyderabad, and Port Muziriz in Kochi, include, The Project Cafe in Goa, and private residences like Prestige Ozone in Bengaluru, where his murals align with arches, chandeliers, and flooring patterns, integrating seamlessly into the geometry of interiors.
Each work is rooted in figuration but layered with magical realism. “Temples, rituals, nature, coastal life… they are profound sources of emotion. That’s what I bring into these spaces,” Sachin says.
One of his most evocative works is ‘Whispers from the Mangroves’, a 15x8-foot mural inspired by the backwaters near his Kochi neighbourhood. Painted in deep greens and gold, it captures not only the mangrove flora but also migratory birds that frequent the area.
For Sachin, these projects are less about scale and more about collaboration. “When there’s a spark between you and the client, something beautiful happens,” he says.
That ethos guided his project in Kasaragod with Stport art India, where he transformed a fisherman’s house into a canvas. His work, ‘Chaavukara’, studied coastal life, weaving together past and present, land and sea. “It was more than artwork. It was about interacting with the community, understanding their lives. The mural becomes part of their world as well,” Sachin explains.
The pandemic, he adds, deepened his practice. Sachin drew on memories of travelling through Rajasthan, creating a blue-hued painting series during lockdown. “Covid was about stillness, and also reflection. Rajasthan felt like a fairytale…the architecture, the music, the musicians on every corner. During lockdown, I painted from those memories. It kept me connected to the world outside.” The series later entered exhibitions, marking his shift into thematic bodies of work. “Each mural creates ambience but also narrative. Viewers don’t just see these works — they inhabit stories,” he adds.
Today, alongside commissioned works, Sachin continues to work on personal series. He is preparing for a new body of work with his father in Fort Kochi.
“The series examines Kochi’s cosmopolitan past, and will be exhibited in a heritage gallery space. We will be ready by the time the Kochi Biennale opens,” Sachin says.
As India’s hospitality and design industries increasingly look to art as a differentiator, artists like Sachin are shaping how interiors feel. His works remind us that walls, too, can be canvases telling profound stories.