Hemali Vadalia is part of an underground cult of painters - the kind that gathers around nude bodies for months at a time, looking closely at every dimple, curve, sinew, a tuck here, a protrusion there, the colour of the skin, the light falling on an arm. Driven into the basement of the art world, their work has been overlooked as “academic”, “archaic”, “too pretty for its own good”. They’ve survived as portrait painters, illustrators, and as anonymous studio assistants.
Hemali didn’t set out to join this sect. She was on a sensible track: Born and raised in Mumbai, she studied engineering at Mumbai University, worked as a software engineer, wrote code instead of painting. A restless streak nudged her to IIT Bombay to study animation, where she first learned of the old masters. A few false starts at art academies in Florence later, she won a scholarship to the Grand Central Atelier in New York. At the atelier, disciples taught disciples, the old craft passed down, exacting and relentless. Months were spent agonizing over the colour of the model’s flesh. Many dropped out; the faithful stayed, training their eyes to see and hands to paint.
The rigour stayed with her. But while the paintings show the stuff of life, the paintings in this exhibition are not made from life. The artist maintains a diary of potential subjects – moments that might otherwise slip past unnoticed – tending to a window garden in her studio, making pineapple kombucha, a visit to the doctor. The faces in these paintings are those at hand –of herself, Gunjan who cooks for the family, Aditi an old school friend and her parents.
When we look back at painting in the last century, the bold gestures, the pierced canvases and the dripped paint were thrilling for a while. But that mountain was climbed, conquered, and here we are at the summit wondering if maybe we miss the simple act of being seen. Hemali restores that service - the slow gaze, the discipline of witnessing life and letting paintings witness you back.
All this writing is a distraction. Go look at the paintings.