Category Archives: Articles About Me

I have been fascinated by Persian and Mughal miniature paintings from the Indian sub-continent since childhood. I used to look at them in books for hours during my school years. At the Fine Arts College in Hyderabad I copied a few and created some new compositions closely based on them. But then I moved away [...]

        “Blue God I” by Salma Arastu
The Hindu Lord Krishna began to dance his way back into Salma Arastu’s paintings, years after her conversion to Islam. How and why did it happen?
I wanted to tell this story in “Painting Past Borders,” my article in the July/August issue of Tikkun, but didn’t have the space.
Looking through Arastu’s [...]

“Abstract people dance across her giant canvasses, which hover and throb with rich colors and an aching sense of peace,” wrote Alana Price of Indian-born artist Salma Arastu in the current Tikkun (on newsstands now). A Hindu by upbringing and a Muslim by marriage, Arastu has been deeply influenced by the flowing lines of Arabic [...]

Salma Arastu has been painting for thirty some years. Born into Sindhi and Hindu tradition in India, she later embraced Islam through her marriage. She has traveled extensively and lived in various countries–India, Iran, Kuwait, UK, Germany and finally the US, where she moved in 1987. In her work, she tries to bring together Eastern [...]