Coming Home

6″ x 4″ mixed media

Artist Statement: This artwork is from a series of seascapes that I’m currently working on, based on my memory of the places I have lived. I have been a wanderer from the time I was very young. The one constant in my life, however, was the sea. My ancestors are from a fishing village in the southern tip of India. I grew up in the Middle East where the sea was a huge part of my childhood – I remember spending most of my weekends at the beach. I recently became an Australian citizen after living in Sydney for many years, and the ocean figures prominently in both my plein air paintings and my writing. “Coming home” is a remembered piece inspired by boats I saw on the Central Coast during a train trip just before the lockdown. It is 6″x 4″ and has been made on canvas grain paper, with acrylics, gouache, distress inks, pens, paper bits, prints isolated from fabric, lace, embroidery threads, and gel medium. 

Oormila Vijayakrishnan Prahlad is an Indian-Australian artist and poet who serves as a chief editor for Authora Australis. Her artworks have been published in various online and print literary journals and anthologies including Club Plum, Parentheses Journal, The International Zine Project, and Oyster River Pages, and on the covers of The Amsterdam Quarterly, Ang(st) the Body Zine, Pithead Chapel, and elsewhere. She lives and works in Sydney on the land of the Ku-ring-gai people of the Eora Nation. Find her @oormilaprahlad and www.instagram.com/oormila_paintings.

A Song for Oormila