The Honest Courtesan Print

Having limited freedom as a teenage girl in India in the 1970s, she found solace in the world of drawing, painting, and poetry. After spending two years at the prestigious Art College of India, disillusioned in love and thirsting for freedom, she left India to travel - a journey which has taken her through adventures and periods of work in the USA, East Africa, Denmark, and the UK, equipping her with a kaleidoscope of experiences and images which have been interwoven into the subject matter of her art. Seema Gill is not only an accomplished painter but also an award-winning poet and her debut novel “Svera Jang” had been nominated for the 2010 East Midlands book of the year.  Her paintings evoke the joys and struggles of life in vivid colour, patterning, fluid interweaving subject matter, and spiritual growth.  Two words sum up her work - versatility, and life. The former is reflected in the range of art forms in which she expresses herself, the diversity of cultural contexts in which she is able to operate, and of the media to which she seems able to turn her hand with ease. The latter appears in her exuberant imagery, bold and yet gently colorful paintings, filled with the intertwining forms of humans, animals, birds, fishes, and insects whose joyous dance draws in the viewers so that they too become a part of the dance.