Majestic Illustrations

Divya Zeiss, DE

Meditating for 15 years

“The smell of the Imperial hotel. The smell I associate with worshipping the Goddess and all her deities. I have breakfast within the smell of the Imperial hotel. "

"I like to believe we are all only instruments of a muse or a genius...anything created spontaneously, with a pure desire is the souvenir of that auspicious moment between the instrument and the creator. "

"Perhaps I desire a garden on the Nile where I can plant my roses. A geographer on an armchair to point me towards Bethlehem. None of these luminaries to illuminate my spelling mistakes on letters I write to those forgetting me. A Maharaj, one rather large, to lend me rubies as large as pomegranates. Steps that lead to Mother. And maybe an altar. Yes, that too."

"I saw who I wanted to be in the mirrors of the Palladio in Jaipur. But there was fear too, a fear of always feeling blue in a Pink city."

"Meditation to me, is holding onto her sari."

About the illustrations

The illustrations are souvenirs of my travels. I always enjoyed the bizarre in a situation, the peculiar that today is very hard to come by; like an ostrich on a bed or a hen covered in rubies. I allow my imagination to speak and I’m not afraid to create unlikely situations.

I can’t say I was ever interested in art itself, I never studied art. But I always needed beauty to surround me and everything that was beautiful became a form of art. Actually, literature was my first love. The way in which words could compose a painting in my imagination was extremely powerful. I began to write about a world I visioned, and later I found a way in which I could draw that same world, a world that once I could only express in my diary.

I like to believe we are all only instruments of a muse or a genius, (the Romans believed there was a divine nature within a person, a guardian angel from birth, inspiring us). Then you could almost say that anything created spontaneously, with a pure desire is the souvenir of that auspicious moment between the instrument and the creator.

Having only recently started drawing, I was very timid with showing anything to anyone; it was my husband who pushed me and said, “If you bring joy to just one person with simply a colour tone, then for a moment you were an instrument, which is what you wish to be.” And he convinced me.