ON A CHILLY SATURDAY MORNING LAST OCTOBER, I sat with the artist Arpita Singh in her studio in Delhi’s Nizamuddin East, chatting about her work over steaming cups of tea. Perched on the mezzanine of the charming house she shares with her husband, Paramjit Singh, also an acclaimed painter, the studio is of modest size, with large glass windows on two sides. Thick, grey winter light poured in, and except for the odd birdcall, a meditative calm reigned. Vast, empty canvases and works-in-progress were propped expectantly against the walls; brushes, notebooks, paint and paper lay scattered all around.

Singh retreats into this stillness every day to work, even at the age of 78. This often means cocooning herself away to sketch, read, or simply think, but work, for her, is a ritual not to be missed. After a career spanning over half a century, remarkably rich with experiments in idioms and media, you might imagine that there would be less anxiety, less compulsion, to toil over every canvas.

“First you have to be able to make, say, a hand, and only after you have learned to master it, can you think of distorting it, turning it into something unfamiliar,” Singh said, a smile playing on her lips. “As an artist, I believe only if I am able to make what I can see, will I then be able to make what I cannot see.”