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V. Shruti Devi is an artist whose creative practice has evolved alongside a life shaped by literature, law, environmental concerns, public life, and a deep connection with nature. Her paintings bring together impressionistic sensibilities, research-driven ideas, experimental techniques, and personal experiences, creating a practice that is as reflective as it is exploratory.
From early experiments with watercolours to her present work with acrylics, palette knives, metallic paints, layering and block printing, Shruti Devi’s artistic journey reflects a continuing curiosity about how ideas, materials and techniques can come together on the canvas.
Shruti Devi’s relationship with art began during her school years at Matday Convent in New Delhi, where she studied from Class 1 through Class 12. Her art teacher, Mrs. Rana, played an important role in shaping her early understanding of creativity.
Rather than prescribing a strict way of making art, Mrs. Rana taught students techniques and allowed them the freedom to interpret a subject in their own way. Shruti recalls learning about shading, strokes and the use of different materials while being encouraged to experiment independently.
Her early creative experiences also included large-scale school projects, including a multimedia collage centred on the theme of women. These experiences introduced her to the possibilities of combining different forms and materials within a single artistic presentation.
While studying English Literature at St. Stephen’s College, Delhi, from 1990 to 1993, Shruti Devi continued exploring the visual arts. In 1991, she participated in a public group exhibition organised through the college’s Fine Arts Society.
The exhibition featured her experimental watercolour paintings. Even at this early stage, she was interested in bringing vernacular elements into her work. One of her paintings was titled in Hindi and signed in Hindi, reflecting her interest in incorporating different aspects of her cultural experience into her art.
Her early watercolours were characterised by extensive use of water and smudging to create an impressionistic effect. Her exposure to books on the lives and works of master artists, particularly the Impressionists, further influenced the way she approached painting.
Nature occupies an important place in Shruti Devi’s artistic vocabulary.
Her connection with nature is rooted partly in her childhood experiences in Kurupam in the Eastern Ghats of Andhra Pradesh. She describes growing up with views of the surrounding hills and developing an early appreciation for the landscape and the people living there.
This relationship with nature continues to appear in her artistic themes. Her work explores ideas connected to nature, indigenous communities and environmental concerns. Her professional experiences in environmental law and public life have also contributed to her engagement with these subjects.
For Shruti, art is not necessarily about explaining every image literally. Some works emerge intuitively, while others begin with research, observation or a particular idea that she wants to explore visually.
Shruti Devi’s artistic practice has changed considerably since her early watercolour paintings.
While watercolours introduced her to an impressionistic approach through water, smudging and fluid marks, acrylics have become a significant part of her later practice. More recently, she has experimented with palette knives, metallic paints, layering and wooden block prints.
Her approach to technique is exploratory rather than fixed. She has learned new approaches through observing artists online and experimenting with demonstrations and videos, including techniques involving the layering of paint.
She has also incorporated wooden blocks into sections of her paintings to create additional textures and visual marks. For Shruti, the artistic decision is not simply about the tool itself, but about how the artist places and integrates that mark within the larger composition.
One of the most distinctive aspects of Shruti Devi’s current practice is the role of research.
Her recent work includes an Ikat-inspired painting, developed after researching the weaving process behind Ikat textiles. Rather than simply reproducing the appearance of woven fabric, she became interested in the relationship between warp and weft and the mathematical planning involved in pre-dyeing yarn so that a particular pattern emerges during weaving.
In the painting being presented through Bhavkala, she translated elements of this process into paint. She experimented with directional colour application to create an impression of the warp-and-weft structure.
The resulting artwork also reflects her interest in combining observation, research and abstraction. The painting is conceived around a beach environment, with rough wall-like forms in the foreground and the Ikat-inspired treatment appearing further into the composition.
Shruti’s approach to colour is also informed by research.
While developing her Ikat-inspired work, she looked at predicted industry colour trends and deliberately incorporated shades associated with those predictions, including clay, blue and orange.
This creates an interesting meeting point between traditional craft references and contemporary visual trends. The painting therefore becomes not simply an exploration of a textile technique, but an experiment involving colour forecasting, material processes and visual interpretation.
Shruti Devi’s creative practice extends beyond painting.
She is also an author and poet. Her book Canvasing Art brings together poems written about 21 of her paintings. The works are reproduced in the book, accompanied by poems that respond to and describe the paintings. This approach places her visual and literary practices in direct conversation with each other.
This relationship between writing and painting is significant to understanding her broader creative practice. For Shruti, an artwork can exist visually while also becoming a starting point for language, interpretation and reflection.
Shruti Devi often works in series rather than creating individual paintings in isolation.
She describes setting aside dedicated, uninterrupted periods for painting, preparing her materials and using the available time to develop a collection of works. This approach allows her to immerse herself in a particular idea or visual direction.
The resulting series can emerge from different motivations—sometimes an idea she wants to illustrate, sometimes a period when she has the time and space to paint, and sometimes a subject that requires research.
After spending years primarily focused on law, writing and public life, Shruti Devi returned to exhibiting her original artwork in June 2024, when she presented works at Quill and Canvas at South Point Mall, Gurgaon, on World Environment Day.
Since then, her paintings have appeared in exhibitions connected with Independence Day and other curated group exhibitions. Her work has also travelled beyond India through international exhibition opportunities.
She participated in the Expo Metro exhibition in Barcelona, where photographs of artworks were presented in large public-space collages. According to her account, this experience subsequently led to invitations for exhibitions in Europe.
Shruti Devi’s creative interests extend into photography, theatre, music and film.
She has been creating photographs and short video works during her travels and has expressed an interest in bringing together painting, acting, theatre and guitar performance through future multimedia projects.
This interest in multiple creative forms reflects the wider nature of her practice: painting is not an isolated activity, but one part of a larger engagement with art, literature, performance and ideas.
Perhaps one of the most distinctive elements of Shruti Devi’s practice is her interest in the questions surrounding art itself.
Her background in law has led her to engage with questions around intellectual property and folk art, particularly as digital media and artificial intelligence introduce new dimensions to authorship and artistic production.
She is also interested in conversations around the environmental impact of artistic materials and the broader policy questions surrounding sustainability in art.
Rather than treating these questions as separate from her artistic practice, she uses them as subjects for discussion and reflection.
For Bhavkala, Shruti Devi’s practice represents a meeting point between art, research, nature, literature and lived experience.
Her journey—from early watercolours and impressionistic experiments to acrylics, palette-knife painting, block printing and research-led works such as her Ikat-inspired series—shows an artist who continues to experiment rather than remaining within a single visual language.
Her work carries traces of the landscapes she encountered growing up, the Impressionists she studied, the literary world she inhabited, and the contemporary questions surrounding materials, culture and artistic authorship.
At Matter Meets Meaning, Bhavkala brings together artists whose practices invite viewers to look beyond the surface of an artwork. Shruti Devi’s work does exactly that: beneath colour, texture and composition are questions about nature, culture, craft, memory and the ways in which ideas can become visual language.
Meet V. Shruti Devi and experience her work at Matter Meets Meaning, Bhavkala Collective 2.0.
