Trilok Prakash Soni.

The artist

Trilok Prakash Soni was born in 1969 in Bhilwara, in the arid Mewar plateau of Rajasthan, into a family that has painted in the Nathdwara tradition for generations. His earliest memory of the studio is not of painting, but of pigment: stones being ground, colours being measured, his father's quiet correction of a tone too cool, a tone too warm.

His training was not academic. There was no school. The lineage was guru-shishya: a slow apprenticeship under his father, the late Shilp Guru Shri Badrilal Chitrakar, and his elder brothers, beginning in childhood and continuing for decades. Among the various traditional forms practised in the family workshop, Trilok found his devotion in the Pichwai paintings of Shrinathji at Nathdwara and Dwarkadheesh at Dwarka.

He continues to live and paint in Bhilwara.

The father and master

Shilp Guru Shri Badrilal Chitrakar was among the most revered traditional painters of the twentieth century. The honorific Shilp Guru, bestowed by the Government of India on master craftsmen, is reserved for the rarest practitioners. Trilok trained under him in the family workshop in Bhilwara from childhood. The training was not academic. It was years of preparing pigments, watching, and beginning again.

He worked across genres of traditional Indian painting: Pichwai, miniature, Jain, Mughal, Rajput. His workshop trained an entire generation of painters, including his sons and grandsons. It was here that Trilok learned not only technique, but the temperament of the tradition: the patience of preparing a binder, the discipline of leaving a line unfinished until the next morning, the understanding that a Pichwai is not a composition arranged for effect, but an offering arranged according to scripture.

Chitra Seva

The Soni family describes its practice as Chitra Seva. The phrase is hard to translate cleanly. Chitra is image, picture, painting. Seva is service, devotion, the offering of one's labour to the divine. Chitra Seva, then, is painting as a form of worship: not painting of a deity, but painting for a deity, and through that act, of the deity.

This is not a commercial framing. It precedes commerce. A Nathdwara Pichwai painter, traditionally, was not making artwork for sale. They were making seva for Shrinathji: backdrops for the temple sanctum, household icons for devotees. The fact that today these works are also acquired by collectors does not change the orientation. The practice begins with offering.

How the studio works

Trilok works on commissions and on completed paintings. Available works are listed on the website as they are finished. Commissions are accepted for size, surface, theme, and finish, including 24K gold leaf, with standard delivery in four to eight weeks. International shipping is fully insured. Each painting is documented with a Certificate of Authenticity and a provenance note.

The studio is in Bhilwara, Rajasthan. Studio visits are welcome by prior appointment. Many collectors combine a visit with a stay in Udaipur, 100 kilometres away.