An exhibition of Druvinka Madawela’s recent paintings is on at the Barefoot Gallery from March 14 to April 7

hands. She has never been bitten. She wraps a cobra around her body like a pashmini shawl. Never show fear in the presence of a snake, Druvinka says. They will respect you for that.

Snakes are present in many of Druvinka’s paintings. They hold things together, including the universe, in their generous serpentine folds.

The artist says she paints late at night, after her children have gone to bed. It is only when the house is perfectly quiet and there is silence and stillness around her that she can work. She works through the night. Her paintings are creatures of the night.

For the duration of the Druvinka exhibition, we went to see the paintings at night and during the day. You have one opportunity to see the art by night, and that is at the opening. You walk around the party guests and look between them and over them to view the canvases. Then you step into the garden, take a seat at the far end and look back at what is visible of the art, which is blazing in bright lights at a distance. A glass of wine later you are back in the gallery, where the art looks now more intense, more ready to yield secrets.

At one Druvinka opening night, the lights went out. During the blackout, the guests had to view the art by the light of oil lamps and candles. The artist was in her element. It was her happiest opening night.

Druvinka says she has found her spiritual home in Himachal Pradesh, a state in North India of great natural beauty. “Hima” is “snow” in Sanskrit, and the full name means “region of snowy mountains.” The state is also known as “Dev Bhumi”, or Abode of Gods. This abode of gods contains more than 2,000 Hindu temples. Himachal Pradesh is approximately 2,700 kilometres north of Colombo, as the crow flies.

Druvinka is a faraway being. You sense her presence here in front of you is fleeting and that she’s waiting for the moment when she can distance herself, recede, disappear. When she told us that she lives in a village in the far north of India, with a view of the great mountains of the Himalayas, we thought: there’s nowhere else she could have gone.

Barefoot, in Indian garb, with bead necklaces, rings and nose ring, she looks like she is about to perform an Indian dance.

A recent newspaper photograph of a nightclub dancer who was reunited with her confiscated pet cobra is another reason we are thinking of Druvinka, a year after her last exhibition.

On Druvinka’s head, Medusa-like, is a snakes’ nest of what she calls “dead hair” – coils of it. She has a mystic bond with snakes, including venomous ones. She is drawn to the reptiles, which she picks up in her bare