Nerda Khara

Miniature painter · Lahore → Clermont-Ferrand

One hair at a time,at any size.

Nerda Khara trained in miniature painting at the National College of Arts in Lahore. She paints Mughal miniatures, portraits and scenes of everyday culture in watercolour and gouache, from a nine-centimetre tondo to a full sheet. Every piece is one of one.

See the works Commission a painting
Round watercolour miniature of a woman in a red dupatta, reading beside a window.
Reading by the Window · Watercolour on paper · Ø 9 cm
A caparisoned grey elephant crossing green hills, followed by two musicians with drums.

Mughal miniature

Opaque watercolour and gouache on wasli, built up in washes with a squirrel-hair brush that comes to a single point. Court scenes, processions and figures in the Mughal and Pahari manner.

See the series : Mughal miniature →
A girl with long curly hair holding a laughing baby in a pink unicorn headband.

Portraits

Faces at the scale of a palm: nine-centimetre tondos, family portraits, children. Painted from your photographs with the patience of a miniature.

See the series : Portraits →
Four children sitting on a dark floor, watching a figure in a yellow kurta walk away over a rose-pink hill.

Cultural painting

The people I actually live among: neighbours, children on a floor watching someone leave the room. Everyday life from South Asia, told on paper.

See the series : Cultural painting →

Selected works

All works →

Commissions

Your story,painted by hand.

Portraits at miniature scale and larger work made to a size you give me. Commissions open twice a year and take eight to twelve weeks.

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From the journal

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Wasli: making the paper before the painting

A miniature starts days before the first line is drawn.

How a commissioned portrait happens

From your photographs to a painting that arrives at your door.

Between the court and the living room

Why my subjects move between courtly miniature and everyday life.