Contemporary Wildlife Artist | Heritage Storyteller | Conservationist in Colour

In the quietly vibrant city of Ahmedabad, surrounded by studios and galleries buzzing with modern Indian creativity, Padmini Kumari stands apart. Her medium is traditional. Her subject is timeless. Her message is urgent. Through her art, she gives form to the wild — not as spectacle, but as soul.

Padmini Kumari is a wildlife artist, but to call her that alone would be too limiting. She is a visual narrator of ecosystems, a custodian of memory, and a descendant of India’s royal hunting legacy, now transformed into a celebration of wildlife through brush and pigment.

Born into the distinguished Awagarh family, with deep roots in India’s forested heartlands and a long history of shikar (royal hunting expeditions), Padmini grew up amidst stories of leopards, tigers, and wildfowl — tales once told around campfires and echoed through the halls of estates like Castle Grant, Agra. But unlike her ancestors, her aim was never to hunt. It was to observe, preserve, and portray.

Her canvases are windows into nature’s quiet moments — a snow leopard pausing mid-step, a hornbill mid-flight, a sambar deer vanishing into golden mist. Working primarily in watercolours, ink, and gouache, her style blends scientific precision with poetic softness. She often spends days researching her subjects, understanding their habitat, movement, and behaviour before allowing them to emerge onto the paper. Her work resists anthropomorphism, choosing instead to portray animals in their own right — dignified, alert, elusive.

What makes Padmini’s practice particularly compelling is its emotional restraint. She avoids drama or overly romanticised wilderness scenes. Instead, there is stillness, a kind of reverence — as if the viewer has just stumbled upon a fleeting, unscripted moment in the forest.

Her contribution to Wildcraft, a silk scarf export label founded by her brothers Chandrapal Singh and Bhumendrapal Singh, brought her wildlife illustrations into an entirely new medium. The Wildcraft scarves, printed in Farrukhabad using traditional techniques, became wearable art — fine silk canvases adorned with geese, leopards, and waterfowl. These scarves offered a rare bridge between textile heritage, fine art, and conservation storytelling.

While based in Ahmedabad, Padmini travels extensively to national parks, sanctuaries, and wetlands, sketching from life when possible. Her recent series focuses on lesser-known species and vanishing habitats, a subtle but clear response to India’s fast-changing ecological landscape. Through gallery exhibitions, print collaborations, and educational outreach, she continues to advocate for wildlife awareness through artistic engagement.

In a world increasingly disconnected from the natural rhythms of life, Padmini Kumari’s work reawakens that primal kinship — reminding us not only of what is beautiful in the wild, but what is at stake.