Mitali Das’s practice is concerned with the interiority of the artistic self, examining the relationship between woman and nature as a framework for articulating feminine subjectivity. Working primarily in watercolour and gouache on paper, Das adopts a medium that facilitates intimate engagement, allowing her to develop a nuanced visual language attentive to introspection and subconscious experience.
Her compositions are populated by natural motifs—flowers, plants, insects, and wild animals—which together construct imaginary, dream-like spaces that resist fixed narratives and expectations. Within these environments, the recurring female figure operates as both subject and proxy, often functioning as an extension of the artist’s own self. This figure navigates a psychological landscape shaped by memory, desire, and imagination. For Das, painting operates as a generative, and often transgressive act, enabling the production of a private, self-determined space. It is a site where feminine agency is asserted, and where emotional and imaginative states unfold beyond the constraints of social regulation and normative structures.
Das’s practice is distinguished by her use of naturalism to construct imagined, fable-like narrative spaces. Within these worlds, fantastical relationships unfold between figures—at times violent and at times humorous—drawing our attention to the interplay of desire and power within the unconscious, where distinctions between the human and the bestial become blurred.
While her work embraces freedom of expression, it is grounded in research and close observation. Das draws upon a wide range of visual traditions—classical, modern, and contemporary—synthesising these influences into a highly personal narrative style.
