Smitha, fondly called Tina by family and friends, has always been fascinated with Indian mythology and the vast realms that their stories inhabit. As a toddler, she began to doodle in earnest and quickly graduated to sketching forms as early as 4 years. From sunsets to her mother’s favourite deity –Ganesha – she began to develop and infuse her sketches with personality that she derived from the stories she heard and her own imagination. Something that started as a formal infatuation grew into something deeper in Smitha over time and she started studying mythology closely.

She was never formally trained in art. Instead she studied Fashion from Pearl Academy, Delhi, worked as fashion page coordinator with Gulf News in Dubai and did her higher diploma in Software Engineering before moving to the US to pursue Graphic Design from The Art Institute of Houston, Texas. While working there, she was called back to head the franchise of Pearl Academy in the UAE as COO. In all those years, she continued to seek and find peace from the daily madness in her painting.

Her tryst with the artist in her came back full circle, when she took a leap of faith, sold the academy franchise and decided to follow her dreams – which led to an unplanned, yet perfectly destined exhibition in Trivandrum in 2011. Deeply inspired, encouraged and emboldened by the huge success of this exhibition, Smitha continues to research, study and draw inspiration from the land of her origin, its vast variety of mythology, folklore, narratives and above all, from the ever alluring traditions of visual representations.

Smitha, while being convinced about her religious detachment, does not hide her inclination towards spiritualism. Her works, a series of paintings in acrylic on canvas, prove her point.