Experimenting with Miniature Art

Anything is Art if an artist says it is

Marcel Duchamp

It is amazing to find that many people find their calling in various fields. It might be painting, playing an instrument or dancing. Well I found Miniature Art amid this plethora of art forms. The love for Miniatures had started pretty early in my childhood and I used to hoard tiny complementary miniature planes and cars and be really pleased with myself.

But, this lockdown has helped me juggle with various ideas, mediums and textures. I taught myself quilling – a craftwork using paper but I still kept challenging myself to make the tiniest possible art. 

I was shocked to observe that something so tiny can be pretty beautiful.

I have created everything – from tiny bouquets to cakes and miniature houses that are just the size of a coin, using only paper and glue. But as learning comes from experience, I pushed myself to experiment with acrylics and pencil shading, imitating other artists but on a smaller surface area. The amount of love I put into my art just made it worth it.

It was an awesome feeling to accomplish something I wanted to try and succeed in it. It didn’t matter how small my milestone was – it meant a lot to me. So, after, painting the imitated versions of art on a pretty small size of 3 X 5cm, I wanted to try painting on different objects just for the thrill. It was just a mere experimentation, but my curiosity lead me to start playing around with other miniature surfaces. I challenged myself to paint on the smallest of smallest objects that I could find and funnily I succeeded. I painted on a variety of surfaces from paper, coins, feathers, leaves, shells and so on.

Each object had a different unique texture and its own challenges, but it was easy to overcome.

  Art is the highest form of hope

Gerhard Richter

And just like Gerhard Richter said, “Art was my only hope” and it became a cathartic experience for me.

This quarantine made me question whether art is meant to be divided into genres and categories under labels or accepted in all its beauty and its flaws?

If there is anything that I have learnt is that, “whatever we create with love is art and it isn’t confined within boundaries” and I hope everyone just goes wild, exploring, experimenting with their passions and expanding their horizons.