While veteran mens wear designer, Arjun Khanna, excellently clothes the human form, cousin Geeta Bubber, reveals it. Her first public showing, Introspection held recently at Gallery Atelier in Mumbai, hung nudes in varying palettes of white and beige moving on to ochre, blue and red. The finest were the pop art panels in flat and basic colours – all sold out immediately – showing a sensibility steeped in colour and contemporeity.

Why nudes? “That’s the time that you strip off all pretences and see what and who you truly are…a ‘baring your soul’ if you will,” exclaims the artist. “That’s a time you can look at yourself.” And so each canvas depicts an expression of self, as she sees it: solitude, observation, reflection…. All the stages that a young woman could go through. She does not admit to these being self-portraits and neither does she deny it. Let’s just say that these are the eternal woman with her eternal emotions on display – almost vulnerable in their decorative contours.

Her tastefully embellished high-rise city home, hung with chandeliers and lanterns, has some of her older canvases on the walls, projecting an artistic history of sorts. Muted colours, a stylised Venetian-type ball, masks and a male nude speak eloquently of variety. Bubber leads us to her bedroom where a modest easel on wheels encompasses her studio. She is one of those women who, within the walls of their home, give expression to their own talents, in solitude. However, Bubber, a mother of two, decided to come public with her stylised anatamical figures, her woman-centric theme adding to the poignancy of her work.

Interestingly, Bubber has been trained in fashion, rather than art. After a stint at applied art at Sophia College, Mumbai, she went on to study fashion design at SNDT. Here, she trained under professionals like Jeanie Naoroji, Hemant Trevedi and Neeta Lulla. However, what she enjoyed most, was illustration and this is what she excelled at. “It was the illustrations that you do before you make the outfit, that I found the most exciting,” she says. “It was the figure that I was keen on.”

After SNDT, Bubber and Manish Malhotra interned together at a fashion store and Bubber’s designs were chosen by the YSL Group. She applied to the Vogue School of Fashion in London but returned to her first calling – art and illustration. As a girl of 14, Bubber had painted her first black and white canvas which today hangs in her home. There is an amazing maturity in the woman’s form, apparent even then. Interestingly, anatomy came to the young artist, almost instinctively. “It always came naturally to me,” she says. “I could always draw the human body and the muscle toning improved gradually.”