Arpita Singh in her Nizamuddin East home. Picture by Rajesh Kumar

Arpita Singh has only recently moved into her new house in Nizamuddin East, New Delhi, and although her living room with its plump off-white silk sofas and Indian red Picasso graphic looks comfortable enough, she has not been able to organise her studio yet. So in her spare time she does small watercolours on her dining table.

The watercolours are small but they are packed with images, seemingly incongruous, even disjointed, and apparently put together without any rhyme or reason. “They have no direct relationship with each other. But they are linked with what I observe, search for and read, and the memories we have inherited. These are not things that have happened to me, yet I can feel them,” says Arpita.

Unlike her oils with their misleading, merry hues applied like thick cream, her watercolours are in sombre shades with a sheen suggesting hidden depths.

In one painting, vultures and a woman are placed next to each other. She had asked her daughter Anjum to download the images of those birds of prey. She turns the page to another painting.

She says she is still looking for a “clue” that would help her reach the conclusion of that painting. An element that would carry forward her narrative and tie up the loose ends.

It is not going to be something predictable, for her interests range from the Gilgamesh and diluvian myths to the origins of Bengalis and their folk tradition. Arpita’s family is originally from Comilla district in Bangladesh, and she spent the first few years of her life at Baranagar. Then she moved with her widowed mother to Calcutta, and thereafter to Delhi in 1946.

Pathways like intertwined ribbons appear in another painting, but she feels a human figure is what it requires. The narangi tree near her house lies prostrate. A woman emerges from the body of a man. Gender is a fluid thing for her. A man lies on cloud nine. A throbbing heart could be a large strawberry. Arpita tries to trace the missing link of these forms. Viewers are left befuddled.

She explains how letters of alphabet sneaked into her works. “In the beginning when we had no money to buy new sketchbooks we used to draw on trade and industrial fair catalogues. The printed matter intermingled with the drawing,” she says.

Then I noticed the two paintings, which she had created earlier in her career, on the wall of this room. One of these is a mesh of lines like a fishnet with red, green and yellow spots. The larger painting is indigo marked with pennants of the same gay shades.

“For nine years, dots and lines were the basic elements of my work. I did them without any premeditation. I did them for eight years. These known objects gradually ushered in figures, first hesitantly, and later with greater facility,” says Arpita, who is known to have completely changed a painting after having worked on it for sometime. Unpredictability is her hallmark.

The notebook she gifted her daughter reveals the trajectory of her quick-changing imagination. She is here one moment, gone the next.