About Nirmali Lima Fine Art

Nirmali Lima left Puerto Rico with a single suitcase and $200 in cash. Her passion for art drove her from the island and landed her in a surprisingly chilly California. Her adventure wasn't the simple starry-eyed wanderings of a young dreamer. Nirmali had a goal. No universities in Puerto Rico offered a major in fine arts, so she brushed up on her English and flew to the US. However, the record low temperatures in Anaheim that year and painfully high rent prompted her decision to move to the southwest, where she discovered a new home.

Nirmali's earliest memories were of form and color. She remembers standing in a shallow pool with decorative pebbles, candy bright orange, blue and coral, scattered over her feet. The tropical light played through the water catching the colors around her toes. This passion had grown with her, but she needed to learn the techniques to express that enthusiasm in her art.

At Arizona State she took her first painting classes, but she excelled at photography while concentrating on "studio arts." Her love of the human form came through in her portraiture. She displayed "an uncanny ability to capture nudes with dignity and beauty, while retaining innocence." She learned to treasure the courageous subjects who modeled for her while she composed landscapes of skin with her camera. This love and her inclusive view of beauty is visible in all her work even today.

After graduation, Nirmali went to Malmedy, Belgium to visit family from her father's first marriage. She fell in love with the town and adopted it as her European home. But this love affair was cut short due to concerns over money. The student loans Nirmali had taken to help put herself through school came due. Again, tempering her artistic passion with practical sense, she joined the military to pay back her debts. She became a cook in the Army, one of the few soldierly professions that allowed any creativity. And she requested a posting in Germany to be close to her newly reunited family.

Duty took her to Bosnia and understandably restricted the time she could devote to her art. Even so, she found ways to express herself. She had her most challenging and rewarding experience while deployed to a remote mountaintop. As the "Queen of the Kitchen," she had complete creative control over three meals a day for six months, feeding her soldiers better than those eating in the mess halls at the major camps.

Not all of her service was in hardship or in a combat zone. While on active duty, she met her future husband, learned to ski on alpine peaks, and made long lasting friendships. Experiences that go into making a lifetime and temper the eye of an artist. Nirmali and her husband were then stationed in North Carolina where they still live along with their two mixed-breed dogs rescued from the Humane Society. During her husband's frequent deployments, Nirmali returned to her first art love-painting. She now paints full time from her own studio.

"I don't aim for pretty pictures; I go straight for gorgeous," Nirmali says when asked about her painting. This statement isn't boastful, but the union of her enduring passion with honed technique. In her work, she brings her grounded realistic view to the representational art she crafts. She creates perfect balances between figure work, capturing the shapes and body positions, and portrait, where expression and personality show through.

Nirmali's adventures haven't ended. Her husband handed her a black velvet jewelry box on their fifth year wedding anniversary. Inside was a ring. A key ring bearing the keys to her own silver Harley Davidson Dyna. Now when she isn't painting, she cruises over winding country roads, chasing the sunset and capturing her dream.