THE invitation says "visit Jija's website www.artllerymantram.com". Visit this site, which is under construction, and you meet the vision and work of one of the most unu-sual women artists of this country. Her online gallery displays a collection of paintings on ancient Indian myths and cosmic forces, embodying spiritual energy with a startling intensity in bold, dramatic strokes. Colours abound and come alive to tell timeless stories.

For this critic, talking to her on the green lawn of her home, about her life and work was a pleasant journey into an aesthetic world. Professionally, a hardcore top police-woman, she is the Chief Vigilance Officer of the Airports Authority of India. She is among some of the toughest no-nonsense women civil servants of the country, but privately she is a creative artist with grand vision and super sensibility. On those qualities she does not have to speak for herself. Her work speaks for her. She is a living synthesis of some major cultural streams of this country in her personality and life. Born in Kerala, she trained to be an academic and journalist. But after teaching in a college for several years, she took to police work with vigilance as her tough and trying profession. She got the name Jija, a very Maharashtrian name, thanks to the famous Ogle family of Maharashtra, great friends of her father. They had suggested that naming the female baby after the famous mother of the great Shivaji would bring great fame and bless her with children with the stature of Shivaji. She married Hari Singh, belonging to a well known Punjabi family who is serving with distinction in the Indian Administrative Service.

Jija Madhavan Hari Singh, that is her name, works with oil and acrylic although her favourite technique is transfers and prints. Incidentally, prints were also the favourite creative technique of some of the greatest masters of Europe. Her colour, line and composition display dynamism and strength and a depth of vision which transports the viewer into wider horizons. She said that she had worked her way through varied art styles and techniques, with basic grounding for hard work and detail in the study and practice of Tanjore, Mysore and Rajasthani art traditions and techniques. Her abstracts are the final outcome of her rich and varied journey through art.

Her works were recently on display at the ‘i am’ art gallery in New Delhi along with the works of V. P. Singh, former Prime Minister of India, Rajesh K. Baderia, a civil servant and mechanical engineer and Amrut Patel. Her abstracts have been exhibited earlier in India, Australia and the U. S. A.. She trained for classical Indian dance and modern dance a la Martha Graham, too, and feels that dance and the creative art of painting have a common spirit. She trained under Judy Burke in Woologong, Australia and at the Georgetown University in the U. S. A. She has two lovely daughters, Yamuna and Anantica.