“Though my happiness seems to be rather small, yet it has the power to expand beyond.”
- Prem Singh
Born in Patiala, Punjab in 1943, Prem Singh obtained his training in painting from the Government College of Art, Chandigarh in the 1960s. His work is deeply rooted in the cultural landscape of Punjab, its festivals, folk traditions and the rhythms of collective life — which continue to inform his visual language of line, form and colour.
Over the decades, Prem Singh has evolved a distinctive practice that moves fluidly between figuration and lyrical abstraction, working primarily in ink and watercolour, often on Chinese rice paper. In recent years, his practice has expanded into the use of metallic pigments — gold, silver, copper and bronze — in a body of work titled “All That Shines”, which draws on childhood memories of the gleam and glitter woven into Indian craft, ceremony and everyday life. His works have evolved from figurative explorations of the human form to lyrical abstractions rooted in nature