Mountain Tales – 2

Nilima Sheikh’s work has been influenced by her travels and exposure to Central Asian, Persian, Chinese, pre-Renaissance European and Indian miniature art from which she borrows freely to build up her own narratives inspired by their storytelling cultures. She merges traditions to create a distinctive style of painting that has resonances from several past civilisations as her work explores myths and legends. In Mountain Tales, she takes episodes from the farthest Himalayan reaches. Striations of plunging earth and vegetation mark her landscape across which a demon-faced creature carries the embalmed or funerary body of a Bodhisattva, perhaps, to plunge into the pool of water at the base of the mountains. While the background of the mythic story is interesting, it is Sheikh’s treatment of the background with its emphasis of Chinese landscape contouring and smudging that holds the viewer’s interest.