Banner artwork: “Maghar”, 63cm x 86cm, Guache and natural pigments on natural hemp paper

When you speak with Datti Kaur, her words unfold slowly, like brushstrokes on wet paper. They circle an idea until it begins to glow, much like the soft pigments she layers on her paintings. Her art, rooted in Indian miniature traditions and Sikh thought, feels less like painting and more like music made visible.

“I think the happiest I’ve ever been in my life,” she says, “was when I was playing my musical instruments. Painting came later, but it feels like a continuation of that same rhythm.”

Born in Chennai to a Kashmiri Sikh family, Datti spent her childhood moving between cities and languages. She lived in Hong Kong and Singapore before moving to Vancouver for university. “Low-key in my heart, I’m South Indian actually,” she laughs. “I was the only Sikh person I knew growing up. My sister was five grades above me, and after that, no one. So I had to figure out what Sikhi meant to me. For me, it became about accepting people for who they are and where they come from.”

Her parents believed that learning music was essential. Tabla lessons began when she was six, followed by kirtan classes at the gurdwara. She remembers feeling restless until she discovered the esraj, a bowed instrument often used in Sikh devotional music. “My soul was so happy,” she says. She played it for twelve years, and when she later moved abroad, she could not take it with her. “It was either 30 kilos of clothes or the esraj,” she laughs. “I chose clothes. But after that, I realized how much I missed that sound. Painting filled the silence.”

What started as quiet sketches became a full artistic language that fuses melody, color, and devotion. Her creative process begins with hours of scrolling through reference images, sketching and redrawing until the composition feels second nature. “By the time I start painting, I’ve drawn it five times. The image is literally engraved into me. When I paint, it feels like entering a portal of your own mind and spiraling into it.”

Patience, she says, is her greatest teacher. “I once spent eight days painting tiny rain droplets. You have to find motivation in monotony. That’s what art has taught me, to find peace even when you’re tired or bored.”

Her work draws deeply from Sikh philosophy but moves away from literal depictions. “Everyone has divine energy in them. Every animal, every plant, every person. You are God, I am God,” she says. “If we go with that mindset, we approach everything with more compassion.” That belief shapes her style. She often replaces clothing and turbans with flowers, freeing her figures from boundaries of caste, region, or faith. “A turban can represent where you’re from,” she explains. “So now I just make it floral. It keeps the figures open.”

She speaks with passion about the loss of visual storytelling in Sikh sacred spaces. “Our gurdwaras today infuriate me,” she says. “They’re so sterile, so white, just marble everywhere. Once, you walked in and saw entire narratives in color. Illustration gives us the power to bring that back.”

Her collaboration with Lost Heritage Productions does exactly that. Titled Oneness and Diversity, the project reimagines the verses of seventeen Bhagats and Sufi saints whose writings appear in the Guru Granth Sahib. Each verse is being retranslated in gender-neutral, monistic English and recorded in its original raag. Datti is creating one painting for each saint, plus an eighteenth that unites them all. “When you translate the Guru Granth Sahib into English, it often becomes Abrahamic, the Lord above you, watching you,” she explains. “But Sikhi is monistic. God isn’t above us. God is within us. We’re trying to fix that through these new translations.” Her paintings for the series will focus on sound and spirit rather than human form. “No bodily depictions this time. Just nature, instruments, and the Divine as vibration.”

Her conversations often shift from philosophy to everyday life with the same clarity. She laughs about scolding street vendors who hand her plastic bags. “I was going to eat it right now,” she says. Environmental care, memory, and healing all flow naturally through her storytelling. Her family’s history in Kashmir and the upheaval of Partition continue to shape her themes. “My grandparents lost family in Partition. That trauma passes down generations. I want to make art that gives that pain a place to breathe.”

When she speaks to young artists, her tone turns gentle. “If you can’t pursue art as a career, that’s fine. Don’t lose joy in it. Give yourself two hours a month to do something creative. That’s the least you can do for yourself.” Then she adds, “People say, ‘I’m not good at art.’ No. You just haven’t been told enough times that your work is good enough. Every artist creates their own world.”

Listening to her, you feel as though Datti paints worlds that already exist, hidden within sound, story, and silence. “If God is within us,” she says, “then my God can be female or male, yours whatever you wish. The Divine is this realm and the cosmos. We are never separate from it.”