An Examination of the Function of Painting in Indian Spiritual Traditions: Visual Spirituality
Year: 2025
Type: article
Abstract: This essay explores the complex connection between painting and spirituality in India. Indian art has employed visual language to convey inner truths, divine visions, and sacred philosophies since the earliest cave murals and continues to do so in modern spiritual abstractions. This research examines how spiritual themes are portrayed in Indian painting traditions and how viewers experience transcendence through visual narratives using a multidisciplinary lens that includes aesthetics, iconography, and cultural studies. The study also looks at how artists of today reinterpret spirituality in ways that transcend religious boundaries. with an examination of how sacred shapes, hues, and symbols promote sahridayata—a mutual spiritual-emotional resonance between the artist and the viewer—and induce contemplative states. The paper illustrates how spiritual painting can serve as a visual mantra, a tool for introspection, and a cultural storehouse of philosophical ideas through compelling case studies like S.H. Raza's Bindu. In the end, the study emphasises how painting has always been used in India's artistic and cultural traditions as a means of spiritual inquiry.
Authors: Sunil Sagar, Dr. Mohanrao B Panchal
Institution: Kannada University
Language: English
Topic: Indian and Buddhist Studies
Subfield: Religious studies
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W7083837865
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