Anudeepa Kadiresan

Anudeepa Kadiresan, known as Anu, is a Melbourne-based artist who brings the art of Southern India to Australian audiences. Through her studio, Dravidian Art, she builds a bridge between centuries-old traditions and the community she now calls home.

Where it began

Anu grew up in Tirupur, Tamil Nadu, and has been painting since she was 12. It was her father who first introduced her to art, and her parents, on a modest budget, would take her around town to buy art supplies even when it stretched the month's money. She went on to study computer science, but art stayed with her.

Finding her way back to art

After her marriage, Anu moved to Australia. The family moved several times before settling in Melbourne, and far from home she missed the culture and traditions she grew up with. Painting became her way to reconnect with her roots.

Largely self-taught, she spent day after day at a Melbourne library studying books on technique and colour theory, and drew inspiration from the National Gallery of Victoria. She began with landscapes and portraits of leaders of India's freedom struggle, then turned to the forms of the deities. Word spread through friends, and soon people were asking her to paint Shiva, Amman, Saraswati, Ayyappan and Murugan for their homes and puja rooms. To paint them faithfully, she spent four months studying the Shilpa Shastra, the traditional texts on sacred form.

An ever-growing practice

Her studio specialises in classical Tanjore painting with 22-carat gold foil, natural pigments, embossed gesso work and semi-precious stones, following the full traditional process from preparing the board to the final gold. Over the years she has also taken up Mysore painting, Kalamkari, realism, impressionism and contemporary styles, oil, watercolour, gouache, glass painting, sculpture, aluminium carving, clay jewellery and digital art. Pencil sketching remains her favourite: it captures emotion and imagination instantly, with simplicity and depth.

For Anu, art is a universal language that needs no words: her brush is her voice and colour her vocabulary. Every finished piece stays in her living room for a few months, where her family, her most honest critics, help her see it afresh before she signs it.