JUDAIYA BAI BAIGA, India

Painting takes me to another world where I am as free as a bird. But I came to be an artist rather late in life—at 70, to be exact. Widowed with three children to raise, I did many things to earn a livelihood. I worked as a farmhand, grazed neighbors’ goats, cut firewood, and even brewed mahua, the local liquor. Then one day in 2008 I met Ashish Swami, a well-known artist who had set up a little studio in my village. His goal was to find a way to preserve local artistic practices that were in danger of extinction. I was one of the women he had hired to decorate the walls of his studio with clay and cow dung, a local tradition. But soon he handed me a brush and pigment, and asked me to transpose the wall art onto paper. Thus began my journey of creativity. I still sit on the floor and paint spontaneously, inspired by the beliefs of my people, the Baiga.