When we visit Nikheel Aphale’s website, “Leehkin”, we are in awe — the background video for his website is just his pen and hand, skillfully creating. You can’t help but trace the way the pen flows and forms the letter so deftly and precisely. His creations are a spectrum — from fine art to graphic designs, Aphale has done it all.

Aphale is a calligrapher who was born and brought up in Mumbai. He graduated from LS Raheja School of Arts, Mumbai, in applied arts, where he had calligraphy and typography as a subject. He learnt different styles and different scrapes, and eventually, he was introduced to the Devanagari script. And what fascinated him the most was how you could emote, without using any graphics or illustrations, but instead with letters. This convinced him to practise calligraphy as a full-time artist. He creates paintings with Devanagari as the core element in his art practice. Why Devanagari? “It is the same as my mother tongue, Marathi,” Aphale mentions. “Since birth, I have been exposed to its sound and visuals, and that created a special bond between me and the script. I realised, as I was pursuing calligraphy, that everybody’s aware of West and Eastern calligraphy, but Devanagari, and many such Indian scripts, are nowhere in the world of visual art — which made me think, I want to show the potential of Devanagari in a global visual and fine art space.”