out of all the paintings i’ve ever made, this one has probably had the most unexpected journey. even now, i find it difficult to believe. it started with a simple thought.
two figures can look at the exact same sky and yet stand in entirely different worlds. that idea stayed with me for a long time.
on one side was rapunzel. she sits beneath a sky illuminated by floating lanterns, witnessing a moment she had dreamed of her entire life. after years of confinement, she finally experiences freedom, love, and the vastness of a world she was once forbidden to see. the lanterns represent hope fulfilled, a future opening before her. a life only just beginning.
on the other side was vincent van gogh’s ‘the starry night’. it is one of the most recognisable paintings in the world. people often talk about its beauty, its colours, its movement. but behind that beauty lies a much heavier story.
van gogh painted it during one of the most difficult periods of his life. beneath the luminous sky is a story of loneliness, emotional struggle, and a mind searching for peace.
and suddenly i found myself looking at two completely different worlds. one defined by wonder and the other by pain. one looking forward and the other trying to survive the present. and yet both were standing beneath the same stars.
that fascinated me.
because i think hope and despair are often treated as opposites, as if they exist on different planets. but they don’t.
sometimes they exist in the same room.
sometimes in the same moment.
sometimes inside the same person.
so i merged those two worlds together. and the result became tangled x starry night.
the painting asks a question that i still think about: if two people can look at the same stars and see entirely different worlds, what determines whether we find darkness or light within them?
i still don’t know the answer. what i do know is that i never expected what happened next… the painting went viral. like... genuinely viral. suddenly people were sharing it everywhere.
orders started coming in from places i had never imagined my art would reach. i packed and shipped tangled x starry night artworks across india, to the usa, to the uk, and to places i never thought my paintings would travel to. for a long time, my room basically looked like a tangled x starry night distribution centre.
i painted it on tote bags.
i painted it on canvas pouches.
i painted it on canvases.
i painted so many versions of it that i started recreating it entirely from memory.
but there was only one large original painting. and when it sold, i decided to do something i had never done before.
i made prints. my very first prints. to this day, i still remember how nervous i was. because artists always hear stories about prints not selling, or people only wanting originals, or customers not caring.
well, that did not happen. the prints sold, and then they kept selling. and honestly, i still can’t quite believe it.
there are thousands of starry night recreations in the world; people paint it every day, students study it, and artists reinterpret it. and yet somehow this particular version connected with people; maybe because it wasn’t really about starry night or rapunzel.
maybe it was about something much more human; the strange reality that two people can live through the same moment and walk away carrying entirely different worlds.
‘tangled x starry night’ is one of the most loved pieces i’ve ever created, and it became my bestseller and my first successful print release. it travelled across countries. it found homes in places i have never even been to.
all because of a question i was quietly thinking about one day: what if two people looked at the same stars... and saw completely different skies?
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