Vikalp Durga Mishra: Painting Worlds of Quiet Empathy

There is something disarming about encountering a work by Vikalp Durga Mishra for the first time. The figures often feel still, almost contemplative. Birds perch gently on shoulders, flowers emerge like silent companions and large watchful eyes appear to observe something beyond the canvas.

The imagery is delicate, but the questions it raises about our relationship with the natural world are anything but small.

For the neopalms Curates series, we spent time understanding the thinking behind his practice - the habits, influences and observations that quietly shape his work.

What emerges is an artistic practice grounded less in spectacle and more in attention.

The Habit of Painting

For Vikalp, painting did not begin with ambition. It began with practice.

In school, his early lessons were simple: studying natural forms like stems, leaves, flowers and rendering them through watercolours. Still life compositions followed. Later came oil painting. What might have been routine exercises for most students slowly turned into a daily rhythm.

The practice stayed with him.

Years later, as he moved from Kanpur to Mumbai to study design, painting continued in the background, not as a formal pursuit, but as something instinctive. Even during design school, where academic demands and freelance work consumed most of his time, painting never disappeared.

It simply kept evolving quietly alongside everything else.

Two Parallel Journeys

Art and design entered his life at different moments.

Painting had already taken root early on. Design arrived later, when he formally began studying it in 2017 and eventually graduated in 2021.

Those years were intense.

College days merged into freelance work as he took on projects to support himself while living away from home. The rhythm was relentless - classes, work, more work and then classes again.

Yet design offered something valuable that painting alone might not have given him: a practical understanding of how creative work functions in the real world.

It shaped his sense of presentation, aesthetics and communication - skills that many artists only learn much later in their careers.

In many ways, design sharpened the way he approached art.

What Inspires the Work

When asked about influences, many artists reference movements, masters or schools of thought.

Vikalp’s answer is quieter.

He speaks instead of love and silence.

Not the dramatic kind of love often associated with art, but the kind that appears in everyday life - relationships with family, friendships that last decades, the familiarity of neighbourhood vendors, the comfort of routines that repeat over time.

Even the smallest elements of life like old houses, trees lining a street, birds resting momentarily before flying elsewhere find their way into his visual language.

These observations, he says, are what shape the emotional core of his work.

Birds, Flowers and a Fragile Ecosystem

Spend time with his paintings and certain motifs appear again and again.

Birds.

Flowers.

At first glance they might seem ornamental, but in his imagination they serve a more symbolic role.

Birds become carriers of life - transporting seeds, pollinating landscapes, sustaining ecosystems that humans rarely notice.

They represent movement, continuity and the fragile balance that keeps the natural world alive. But there is also a quiet tension within these images.

As forests shrink and trees disappear, birds lose their homes. In many of Vikalp’s paintings they begin appearing in unusual places - perched on human shoulders, resting on heads, occupying spaces where nature once existed.

It feels almost like a migration into human space.

Not out of choice, but necessity.

The Eyes That Watch

Another detail viewers often notice in his work is the gaze of his figures.

The eyes are large, calm and attentive. But they rarely appear directed toward the viewer.

Instead, they seem to look outward with deliberate gaze. It shifts the relationship between the artwork and the audience. Rather than inviting us to observe the painting, the painting appears to be observing us.

They are looking at what we are doing. In this sense, the figures become quiet witnesses to the environment we are shaping around them. They are witnessing the cruelty that happens with other species and other beings in this world. 

The Discipline of Looking

Despite the symbolic richness of his work, the process behind it remains remarkably simple.

There is no elaborate ritual or formula. A sketchbook travels with him almost everywhere. Ideas are captured quickly sometimes drawn, sometimes only remembered for later.

Much of the process begins with observation.

Vikalp often compares it to the way musicians practice. Before performing, musicians spend years listening carefully to sound and rhythm. For him, painting follows a similar philosophy.

You look.
You listen.
And then you practice.

Music also plays a role in his studio, older ghazals and shayari that create a contemplative atmosphere while he works.

The Stories Behind Commissions

While independent work forms the core of his practice, one form of commission holds particular meaning for him: family portraits.

These projects begin not with a visual brief, but with conversation.

Clients share memories - stories of loved ones, moments of loss, fragments of family history that rarely surface in everyday conversations.

The process of translating these narratives into imagery becomes deeply personal.

One such portrait, created for a client named Harish, left a lasting impression on him. The painting included Harish’s mother, who had already passed away. While working on it, Vikalp describes feeling a strange sense of presence, as though memory itself had become part of the painting.

Experiences like these have shaped how he approaches commissioned work.

The conversation, he says, is often as important as the artwork that follows.

What He Hopes Viewers Feel

When asked what he hopes people take away from his work, the answer is simple.

Love. And empathy.

Two emotions he believes are often misunderstood or diluted in modern life.

His own life, by his admission, is intentionally small and contained - a close circle of family, a few lifelong friends and familiar routines that rarely change.

Within that quiet environment, empathy feels easier to practice.

Through his paintings, he hopes that same sensitivity might extend outward, reminding viewers to notice the lives that exist alongside our own.

Craft as a Way of Living

If there is a guiding philosophy behind Vikalp’s practice, it is not expressed through grand statements about art.

Instead, it appears in something simpler: respect for the craft itself. Painting, for him, is neither mythology nor spectacle. It is simply what he does every day.

A practice to return to with the same patience, care and sincerity - again and again.

On Advice for Young Creatives

When asked what advice he might offer someone beginning their own creative journey, Vikalp is hesitant to position himself as someone with answers. For him, the idea of giving prescriptive guidance feels premature.

But there is one principle he returns to repeatedly: intent matters.

Whatever the pursuit - art, design or any other craft - he believes the spirit with which one approaches the work eventually reveals itself in the outcome. Creating with resentment, competitiveness or malice inevitably seeps into the process.

Instead, he speaks about approaching work with clarity, sincerity and a certain generosity of spirit. Even when differences arise, he believes it is possible to move forward without carrying bitterness into the work itself.

For Vikalp, this isn’t limited to artistic practice. It is a way of moving through life.

Do the work with honesty. Respect the process. And let the intention behind it remain generous.

Because in the end, the energy you bring to the work often becomes part of the work itself.