Payal Prakash is a visual artist based in Chennai, India. She works primarily in painting and mixed media. Her practice is grounded in a sustained inquiry into perception, light, and duration,  exploring how landscapes are experienced rather than depicted.

In recent years, her works have shifted toward material experimentation, incorporating phosphorescent elements to create paintings that operate across dual perceptual states. These works reveal themselves gradually, requiring time, darkness, and sustained attention, and resist instant visibility or spectacle. Rather than functioning as illumination, light in her paintings becomes a conceptual tool – activating memory, absence, and the instability of seeing.

Payal’s landscapes are not representations of specific places, but constructed spaces where form emerges slowly and partially. Silence, restraint, and temporal unfolding play a central role in her process, allowing the viewers’ experience to remain open-ended. The work privileges contemplation over immediacy and perception over narrative.

Her earlier works (2021-2024) reflect a formative phase of painterly exploration and are presented as part of her evolving practice. Her current body of work marks a clear material and conceptual departure, emphasizing continuity, depth, and long-term inquiry.

Payal continues to work from her studio, developing a body of work (currently in process) through extended research on her medium and focused presentation.

Award-Winning Artist

Recipient of:

– Bharat Kala Samman Award (2022)
– Awesome Artist Award by JITO Ladies Wing (Delhi, 2023)

Notable Exhibitions

2025, Aug.- IAF Elite Art Fair, Chennai – Solo booth

2024, Dec.- Cholamandal Artists’ Village, Chennai ( funded group exhibition by Tamil Nadu Arts and Culture Department)

2024, Nov.- Kala Spandan Art Fair, Mumbai

2024, Oct.- Bal Gandharva Kaladalan, Pune

2022, May-  Indian Art Festival, Mumbai