We spoke to artist Neeta Madahar, who will feature in the forthcoming exhibition Every Step of The Way at The Arc, just before the artist decamped to India to continue her studies in Indian miniature painting. Madahar is one of thirty-three artists invited to articulate an experience of walking the South Downs Way and her painting will feature in the show that opens on Friday 4 April in The Gallery. In this article, Madahar tells us about her career, current passions and the beautiful pieces she is making for the exhibition.
How did you become an artist?
I have always loved art. I took part-time classes when I was living in Bath, which led to me doing a Foundation Diploma from '95 to '96. From there I did a BA Fine Art degree at Winchester Art School from '96 to '99. Art school was intense and amazing, and still to this day I've got friends from that time. I just carried on from there, making my work, knowing that I could do that outside of an academic setting and that I had the discipline.
I went to the US in 2000 and did my MFA degree in Studio Art in Boston and that was great. It expanded my horizons radically being at art school in America, mixing with different people and having the opportunity to visit places in the US. I came back to the UK in 2003 and again continued to make work which has evolved. I started off as a painter at Winchester Art School, before exploring installation work and then video and, when I was in the States, I studied photography.
Please could you tell us more about your most recent interest, Indian miniature painting, which has influenced the creation of your work for the Every Step of the Way exhibition?
In the last four years, I've been apprenticed to an Indian miniature painting master in Jaipur, India. I feel like I've come home artistically. I love working within a tradition, with processes that have changed very little over several hundred years, but there is still room for innovation. I work with a traditional vocabulary, but recontextualise it through my background as a contemporary artist with formal training undertaken in the West. I'm excited about what I'm working with. I can recognise certain themes that are consistent throughout my years of making art, for example an interest in detail, a love of craft, visual seduction as a means to engage an audience and a fascination with the natural world. I occupy this place of being the maker of this work, deeply loving the things that I'm interested in and having the opportunity to spend time with them. But at the same time, there is uncertainty - I don't know what I'm stepping into. I kind of know what I'm doing, maybe one or two steps ahead and that's about it. There is so much to discover and I'm excited about that. That hasn't really changed very much from when I first began making art and still sustains me now.
Exploring landscapes and transforming them using the principles of Indian miniature painting, the execution of which she has been perfecting by copying existing works, is one of Madahar’s main interests.
Finally, how are you progressing with work for the exhibition?
I hiked sections of my walk, from Eastbourne to Alfriston, last September and October. I did the whole of my section once, over a couple of days, from Eastbourne to Birling Gap and then from Birling Gap to Alfriston. I took pictures along the way and then short-listed one from Beachy Head to work with for the commission.
I've already started translating this image into an Indian miniature painting. I'm actually making two paintings and I might start a third one. It's become typical for me to work on multiples at the same time as that allows me to broaden experimentation and not get too precious about how things work in one image. This is one that I'm doing on traditional wasli paper.
Already these two have been worked up to a preliminary stage where I'm building up the wash layers before I go into adding details. There are already some things that I'm doing in these paintings that are conventions in Indian miniature painting. For example, there is never a straight horizon line. I've chosen a curved line that mimics the curve of the Earth. Additionally, I'm going to be adding Indian miniature clouds to put in some more detail in the sky and I've added more background with a grassy area. On one of my trips, I saw some sea kayakers, so I'd like to include those.
These paintings aren't a one-to-one translation of a photograph. They're evocative of what I was thinking or feeling at the time of walking and how I'm working through the processes of building these as Indian miniature paintings. I've never worked directly from photographs to translate them into Indian miniatures before. I'm excited about this and I'd love to do this kind of work more; to go on hikes, take pictures and make sketches, and come back with this reference material to the studio and see how I can transform them into an Indian miniature painting. The hikes are transmuted into another kind of journey. This is where I'm at right now.
In the video below, you can hear Neeta Madahar talking more about the commission and her fusing of the imaginary and visible:
To book tickets for the Every Step of the Way exhibition please click here
Every Step of the Way at The Arc, Winchester, runs from Friday 4 April to Wednesday 16 July 2025.
