Exhibition: The World Through a Porthole

The narrative Sheila’s art transcends moments when she was sailing with her husband who commanded merchant ships in the 1970'. When on board the ship she was thrilled to find four large portholes in her cabin. To her, these were the most liberating links between the confines of the cabin and the world outside. As she sailed across oceans she studied the pulse of the sea, capturing its every mood, from serene peace to one in full fury. Her works blend reality with imagination and are often simply allegories. Emphasizing the construct of portholes, Sheila takes the viewer back to an era when butterfly nuts were used for boarding up the windowpane to the porthole. As the years rolled by, from the 20th to the 21st century, she depicted this phenomenon by using the period newspapers and froze those moments on her canvases. Her paintings have been exhibited at very prestigious venues and are in Corporate and Private Collections around the world.

London-based Artist, and freelance Art Critic, Sheila Malhotra was raised in Shimla, the summer capital of the British Raj in India, Sheila studied at Auckland House School, graduated from the Punjab University, and studied art at the Government College of Arts, Chandigarh, Punjab.