Notes on painting in India #1
Painting Madhumeha - Residency
As I arrive in a buzzing, dense neighborhood in New Delhi, settling into my hotel, I find myself slowly reflecting on the six weeks I spent at the Rembrandt Residency in Jodhpur, organized by the Public Arts Trust of India in collaboration with the Dutch Embassy.
During this hectic time full of inspiration with days AND nights of painting on my rooftop with view over the Mehrangarh Fort, I created 15 paintings in a series titled Madhumeha (honey-urine), named after the Ayurvedic term for what we now understand as type 1 diabetes. I came to India to explore the lived experience of this condition—not only my own, but also that of fellow patients, endocrinologists, and alternative practitioners working within Ayurveda. At the same time, I wanted to weave this research into the textures of Jodhpur—the Blue City—set within the desert landscape of Rajasthan.
A Self-Portrait
Madhumeha has, in many ways, become a self-portrait.
Of all the encounters—the conversations with doctors, the visits to Ayurvedic practitioners (even an Ayurvedic university!!), the colors of the city, the stepwells with their centuries-old systems of water collection that shape the urban landscape—what lingers most is the confrontation with my own body. A body that often doesn’t seem to work with me. This tension runs through the series, distilled into each work.
There is something strange about seeing it outside of myself—translated into color, into form. As if the body I live in can finally be looked at from a distance (even if it is for a short moment).
Before Jodhpur
But the story of painting my chronic illness stretches much further back than these past months. Madhumeha did not begin in Jodhpur.
The impulse—to understand, to cope, to resist—runs through my veins. Veins that, because of diabetes, are slowly narrowing. For years, with a kind of stubborn persistence, ink has been flowing from my pen onto paper, tracing these struggles. The first work in the Madhumeha series, Polydipsia, had already begun in December 2025, in Kathmandu.
Kathmandu — The First Image
While traveling in Nepal, I stumbled upon a small paper shop in the Thamel neighborhood. They sold beautifully handcrafted sketchbooks. In one of them, I began to write and draw, and the sketch seemed to flow out almost involuntarily sometime later when I was in Kerala.
Looking back at it now, I can already see the beginning of something I did not yet fully understand, as most of my paintings start. And as I mostly fully understand my paintings after finishing them.
I tried to give form to my fears: the anxiety of blood vessels narrowing and closing, the unquenchable thirst that comes with high blood sugar, the danger of dehydration when insulin is absent.
At the same time, the mask appeared—a demon. A malicious presence I find myself fighting every day. Sometimes it is a voice in my head, sometimes something physical: a body that refuses to align with how my mind thinks it should behave.
But at that moment, I didn’t yet know this image would return later in Jodhpur.
The Eye
In Kathmandu, I had the strange sensation that masks were everywhere—especially in temples, among the gods. And always, there were the eyes of the Buddha, staring out from the stupas. The all-seeing eyes. It was everywhere.
It made me think of my own internal gaze—that constant, critical self-awareness. The voice that says: it can be better, take better care, push through. But also the darker pull—the spiral of self-criticism.
And alongside that, the fear.
The overwhelming fear of complications. Of losing my sight.
First Day — Jodhpur
On my first official day of the residency, the 23rd of February—still trying to process the Indian chaos, the cows in the streets, stray dogs running around, and the constant sound of traffic honking its way through the city—I went to see an endocrinologist.
It was a conversation that opened my eyes, but also confronted me, very directly, with my own mortality.
We talked about procedures, treatments—everything seemed quite similar to what I knew from home. Maybe a bit more outdated in places, but overall familiar. Until the conversation shifted.
He began to speak about the stubbornness of some of his patients.
Many people who come to his clinic are newly diagnosed with type 1 diabetes. They are told they need insulin, that this is not optional. But more often than he would like, patients—especially from rural areas—do not accept the diagnosis. Instead, they turn to alternative treatments: Ayurveda, and in some cases even practices he described as forms of black magic.
By the time they return—and they have to return—it is often too late.
Many come back after a week, sometimes longer, in a state of ketoacidosis. In the most severe cases, they already show severe complications.
I needed a moment to process what he was telling me.
This was no longer abstract. No longer something distant or hypothetical. It was immediate, physical, and irreversible.
And this was the moment I knew I had to make the painting I later called Polydipsia.
polydipsia
/ˌpɒliˈdɪpsiə/
Polydipsia is the medical term for excessive, persistent thirst and an abnormal urge to consume large amounts of fluids. It is often a symptom of underlying conditions, most commonly diabetes mellitus (high blood sugar) or diabetes insipidus, rather than a disease itself. It is frequently accompanied by polyuria, which is excessive urination.
Ending — Ongoing
What I’m starting to realize is that these stories don’t really end for me.
Even within a single painting like Polydipsia, there are too many layers to hold at once—references that stretch in every direction . Medical narratives. Conversations with doctors. The colors of Jodhpur. References to the architecture of the stepwell. My own body. The people I meet along the way.
All of it matters.
But not all at the same time.
Maybe that is also the point—that the work doesn’t need to resolve everything at once. That it can remain open, accumulating meaning as I move through different places, different conversations, different states of mind.
Last week after leaving Jodhpur I was a few days in Jaipur and something unexpected happened on my last day there.
I showed a photo of one of my paintings to someone at my hostel. He looked at the mask and immediately said it reminded him of Death Note. I hadn’t thought about that connection at all.
But now I can’t unsee it.
The figure of the demon, the presence of something lingering between life and death—it feels strangely close to the character of Ryuk. Uncanny, almost too familiar.
So now, as expected, I’ve started binging Death Note!!
And I find myself wondering how these images travel—how something that emerged from my own body, from diabetes, from fear, from lived experience, can suddenly connect to a completely different visual world, even a different story.
Polydipsia began as a way to make sense of health, of diabetes—to translate an inner condition into something visible, something almost physical. A way to bring the internal and external worlds closer together, through a kind of poetic, painterly language.
But maybe the work doesn’t belong to me in that way anymore.
Maybe it keeps shifting.
Maybe new references will keep attaching themselves to it, whether I expect them or not.
Who knows what kind of images will emerge next…