The artist
Ghunghru Sahay
ghunghru · घुँघरू · noun
the small bells a dancer ties at the ankle, keeping time with every step.
The studio is named for a pulse. The paintings are signed with a word for a dancer’s bells. Rhythm runs through all of it.
Ghunghru Sahay paints the places she keeps going back to, and the faces that stay with her. Varanasi returns again and again: the ghats in full colour, the same stone steps washed grey after rain, the evening aarti blazing against the dark.
Her portraits travel further, from a Kazakh bride in a silver saukele to a grandmother laughing through a curl of smoke. Between them sit quieter things: a village hand pump, a sparrow on a bare branch, three poppies rising out of the dark, a camel caravan cresting a dune in the Thar.
She moves between mediums as each subject asks. Watercolour for light and water; oil and acrylic when a painting needs weight; white or soft pastel on black paper when she wants something to glow out of the dark. Now and then the brush leaves the canvas altogether and ends up on a wall clock.
Every piece here is an original, signed in the corner simply Ghunghru.
A few favourites
See all 27 paintings
Say hello
Write to Ghunghru.
About a painting, a commission, or just to tell her which one stopped you. Messages go straight to her on WhatsApp.