Discover the Art of Yasmin Zaidi
Yasmin Zaidi spent nearly three decades in education – teaching, setting up new schools, and working as an administrator – working in Uttar Pradesh, Delhi, Haryana and Rajasthan. For the next two decades, she devoted her time to family, gardening, art and craft.
Most of her larger canvases are done in oil paint. She has also worked with pen and ink, and has lately been experimenting with crayon sketches. She also embroiders, knits and crochets large and small pieces.
A Journey Through Art
Her first exhibition was focused on flowers (still life) and trees. The paintings were displayed at The Corinthian Club in Pune, in 2008, as ‘A Floral Tribute’ on Mother’s Day. It was in memory of her mother, who was also a keen gardener and had loved flowers.
She painted a new series during the recent Covid-19 pandemic. Struggling to deal with the grief and trauma all around, she tried to look for beauty and hope in the midst of it all.
She has illustrated some writing projects by Annie Zaidi (her daughter). These were black ink drawings for her novella, ‘Gulab’ (HarperCollins India, 2014) and ‘Bread, Cement, Cactus: A memoir of belonging and dislocation’ (Cambridge University Press, 2020).
Explore Her Art
This is a curated selection of paintings, illustrations and craft projects. From vibrant oil paintings to delicate watercolours, and from ink to crayon sketches, the artist’s journey continues…
She is the daughter of the well-known freedom fighter and poet-scholar Padmashri Ali Jawad Zaidi. Since he had a transferable job, the children grew up all over the country. As a family, they shared a love of the arts and crafts and quite early in life, Yasmin Zaidi also dabbled in poetry and book illustrations. One of her earliest books was a hand-painted alphabet book, printed by the Frank Brothers in Delhi. Some of that work has been lost over the decades, but a few of those early watercolours were saved and have been represented on this website.