My personal style signifier is print on print. I don’t mind clashing and I think I can pull it off. I often buy fabric and have my tailor make me stuff – most recently a block-printed green strappy top and midi skirt with beautiful green flowers. I also wear a necklace from my grandmother, my dad’s mom, and a cat’s-eye ring that belonged to my maternal grandfather. My mum always said it was a lucky ring, and I feel like I have a very nice life, so maybe she’s right? I wear it along with my wedding ring; both usually never come off.
The last thing I bought and loved was a woodcut by Soghra Khurasani. It’s a print of a night sky over a field that reminded my husband and me of the view from his family home in Belgium. It hangs above our dining table where we’re slowly building a gallery wall. A lot of the art we have is from family. I have a portrait my mum did of my brother, and my husband’s grandmother used to paint flowers as a teenager, so we have one of those.
A bouquet of dried flowers hangs from a bookcase in the living room of Rithika Merchant’s home in Mumbai © Rid Burman
The place that means a lot to me is Henri-Chapelle, a tiny village near Liège, Belgium, where my husband’s family lives. It’s the complete opposite of Mumbai – just fields and very quiet. Sometimes too quiet to sleep. His parents have a guesthouse where I paint, overlooking the fields. There are feral cats and magpies, the latter of which you might recognise from my paintings. There is so much nature and greenery and lushness in my work, and this is a really nice place to make it.
