About the Artist HARMEET SINGH
Artist. Observer.
For over three decades, Harmeet Singh has followed a path shaped by curiosity, discipline, and a deep, instinctive trust in the power of the hand-made mark. His journey began in 1990 during his foundation training at the National Academy of Direct Taxes in Nagpur. Amid lectures, campus quiet, and a library full of art books, he discovered the magnetic pull of watercolours. What started as experimentation became devotion: he produced three to five paintings a week, driven purely by the desire to understand how colour flows, disperses, aligns, and dissolves. That early intensity culminated in an 8′ × 6′ oil on canvas — unveiled at the Academy’s valediction — a symbolic bridge between an academic chapter ending and an artistic life beginning.
The First Solo
In 1994, Singh’s path intersected with influential senior artists at the Apeejay College of Fine Arts in Jalandhar. Their mentorship, dialogue, and camaraderie ignited a new phase of growth. He co-founded Panjab Arts Heritage soon after, organising exhibitions and workshops across Panjab, Haryana, Chandigarh, Delhi, and Himachal between 1994–1997. These years built the foundation of an artistic community and helped shaped his understanding of how art lives in public space. His first solo exhibition at Panjab Lalit Kala Gallery, Chandigarh, in 1994 firmly positioned him as an emerging voice in the region.
A Series of Solo Shows
Solo shows in Delhi, Chandigarh, Jalandhar, and eventually the Taj Art Gallery in Mumbai followed. The 1999 Mumbai exhibition was a turning point — the moment he understood that art was not only an expressive form but a language that collectors were ready to invite into their homes. This was the beginning of an artist stepping confidently into his own value.
Going Digital
As the digital world accelerated in the early 2000s, Singh adapted with unusual clarity. He began creating digital versions of his work, embraced online galleries, and built his own website long before it became common practice. His art now moved beyond geographic limitations, reaching audiences across India and abroad. This mindset — open, experimental, and forward-looking — continues to shape his practice today.
Experimenting with Oil Pastels
Over time, Singh expanded his mediums: soft pastels, oil pastels, Dutch pigments, French cold-pressed papers, large canvases, and eventually acrylics and palette-knife abstractions. Each shift represented not a break but an evolution. His works from this period often sold instantly — a quiet affirmation that his intuitive exploration resonated widely.
Photography & Film making
Parallel to his studio practice, Singh developed a deep connection with nature. Living near a reserve forest in Mullanpur exposed him to birds, butterflies, and seasonal rhythms. Photography and film came naturally — another way of slowing down, observing, and sharing the subtleties of the natural world. His short film The Story of Piloo is an extension of this sensibility: attentive, compassionate, rooted in quiet watching.
Studio Irises
Today, Singh works from Studio Irises — his gallery and creative sanctuary in New Chandigarh. The space represents both culmination and beginning: a place where his decades of exploration crystallize into exhibitions, conversations, workshops, and a personal archive of ideas. Visitors often describe it as more than a gallery — it feels like stepping inside the artist’s internal landscape, where colour flows without borders and silence has shape.
The Art
At the heart of Singh’s work is movement — the moment colour meets water, the second gravity intervenes, the breath between turbulence and calm. Whether through watercolour, pastel, or acrylic abstraction, he seeks to capture an inner state before it disappears: a fleeting alignment of thought, environment, and emotion. His paintings are not planned compositions so much as lived experiences made visible.
The Craft
Yet what truly distinguishes Singh’s practice is his entirely manual process. In an era dominated by digital shortcuts and AI-generated aesthetics, his work asserts the value of the human hand — its imperfections, its decisions, its energy. This positions him firmly within a post-digital hand abstraction movement, where the gesture becomes a statement of authenticity.
Continuous Conversations
Collectors often say that living with his art feels like living with a quiet presence — something stabilising yet dynamic, meditative yet full of life. Each work carries the weight of a long journey: from the first brushstrokes in Nagpur to the layered abstractions of today, from the forest paths of Mullanpur to the luminous walls of Studio Irises.
Harmeet Singh continues to paint, explore, refine, and reinvent — building a body of work that speaks to both the immediacy of emotion and the slow unfolding of a lifetime.
