After the Mother's return to India, she became within a few years the centre of a growing spiritual community in Pondicherry , known after 1926 as Sri Aurobindo Ashram. Sri Aurobindo recognised in her the one person who could share, as an equal collaborator, his labour of developing the new spiritual path which he called Integral Yoga. When, at the end of 1926, Sri Aurobindo withdrew into seclusion for intensive spiritual work, the supervision of the  day-to-day activities of the Ashram and the guidance of the increasing numbers of disciples became largely the Mother's responsibility .This left little or no time for her to pursue private art projects.
            Nevertheless, the Mother's ingrained artistic impulse found spontaneous expression from time to time, especially in sketches and drawings in pencil, ink or charcoal. Some of these were dashed off in a moment, others were more carefully executed. The oil paintings from this period are few in number and small in size . After about 1930, the Mother painted only on very rare occasions in order to demonstrate the technique to someone who wished to learn.
            The painting to which the Mother gave the title "Divine Consciousness Emerging from the Inconscient" exemplifies the spontaneous, unpremeditated character of a good part of her later work. The story behind it helps to explain its "modem" appearance. During the early 1920s Sri Aurobindo's brother, Barin, was doing some oil painting under the Mother's guidance. As is the common practice of artists, a small board was kept for depositing the surplus paint left on the palette after each session. A random mixture of colours covered most of the surface of this board. One day when Barin had finished his work the Mother asked for the palette and, with the remaining paint, gave a few deft brush strokes to the centre of the board covered with old palette- scrapings. Thus the painting was completed.
            Evidently, something had struck the Mother in the swirl of colours on the board. The suggestion of a face may have been already visible in the midst of it. In the finished painting, a face resembling Sri Aurobindo's emerges from the chaos of colours which appropriately represents "the Inconscient" , according to the Mother's title. The Mother herself confirmed that the face is Sri Aurobindo's. It is likely, as is reported in one version of the story , that Sri Aurobindo was present at the time of this incident and she took the opportunity to paint a quick portrait of him. The Mother liked the painting enough to have it printed along with the title she gave it.
             Portraits form the largest category of the Mother's later drawings. Perhaps the most precious of these are a pencil portrait of Sri Aurobindo and a few self-portraits . Of the portraits of disciples, several in charcoal done in 1931 are especially fine . Prior to 1931, there is a ten-year gap in the Mother's dated drawings after the portraits of 1920. A similar gap occurs from 1936 to 1946. Then we find a number of portraits dated 1947 and 1949, and a few scattered through the 1950s. The last dated portrait is a sketch of Champaklal, the Mother's attendant, done on 23 December 1959 to try out some new handmade paper. The Mother wrote next to the sketch, "it can be useful as drawing paper" .
             The Mother's drawings other than portraits may be divided into three or four categories. A set of animal studies includes several charming sketches of cats , an expressive face of a dog , and an imposing lion . Then there is a group which may be described as visions and symbolic drawings . These are all undated. Some belong to the pre-Pondicherry period. The one the Mother called " Ascent to the Truth" is perhaps the most significant in this category .The version on has often been reproduced. Among the Mother's other studies and sketches, a few landscapes and nature studies may be mentioned.
     The story behind one of the portrait-sketches is of interest for the light it sheds on the Mother's method of drawing. The portrait of Champaklal done on 2 February 1935 is unique in that it was done with closed eyes. When the Mother took the picture to Sri Aurobindo she said, "The pencil just went on moving." Though this kind of feat was not the Mother's normal practice, it is a striking illustration of a principle on which she more than once insisted, namely, that the hand must acquire its own consciousness:
      I have told you that no matter what you want to do, the first thing is to put consciousness in the cells of your hand. If you want to play, if you want to work, if you want to do anything at all with your hand, unless you push consciousness into the cells of your hand you will never do anything good. ...You can acquire it. All sorts of exercises may be done to make the hand conscious and there comes a moment when it becomes so conscious that you can leave it to do things; it does them by itself without your little mind having to intervene.
     The Mother gave her help and encouragement to a number of people in the Ashram who wished to draw and paint, both beginners and trained artists. The results were varied, often original and sometimes remarkable. For two or three aspiring artists she herself made sketches and suggested compositions. The paintings of Chinmayi (Mehdi Begum) display an impressionistic style and carry a great deal of the Mother's training and influence. The Mother demonstrated the technique of oil painting to Barin, Sri Aurobindo's brother, in the 1920s, to Sanjiban in the 1930s and to Huta in the 1950s.
      Sanjiban has recounted how the Mother introduced him to oil painting after he had made sufficient progress in painting with pastel colours:
      I wanted to do oil painting. The colours and brushes were ordered from Calcutta and paid for by Mother. She asked me to meet her at 10.30 in the morning on Pavitra's verandah. She had an old piece of canvas ready and called Chinmayi to pose for her. Then she showed me how to take out the colours and arrange them on the palette. She gave me a palette knife which she had used and asked me to keep it with me.
            Then she painted Chinmayi-only her face, forehead, hair and the background. While she painted she talked. "Do not put direct dark colours on the head," she said, "first put the facial colours and .then the dark colours-this will give a better impression. If you put black directly, it will give the impression of a hole." Then she asked, "Do you know how to do the background?" She took another brush and did the background. "See, the head is not touching the background. There is space in between." Then she blended the edges of the hair with the background.

   The Mother encouraged Huta to illustrate Sri Aurobindo's epic poem, Savitri, and herself made sketches for the paintings. Her sketches are not reproduced in the present volume, but some of the paintings based on them and done according to her instructions have been published elsewhere. Naturally, the actual execution of the paintings represents Huta's style and ability and cannot be considered identical to what the Mother would have done with her own hand. Yet these "meditations on Savitri" give a hint of the kind of mystical imagery and symbolic expression she might have employed if she had taken up painting again in her later years. Their purpose is, in the Mother's own words, to make us "see some of the realities which are still invisible for the physical eyes." The work with Huta in the 1960s on the illustration of Savitri was the Mother's last substantial involvement with art.
            The Mother attached little importance to her own artistic accomplishments. Her attitude towards her own art was one of complete detachment and impersonality .This was true with regard to both her earlier paintings and her later work. A conversation recorded by K. D. Sethna reveals that this was more than ordinary modesty .Here we get a glimpse of the consciousness in which the Mother lived:
            Vividly does one of her disciples remember what she spoke apropos her own paintings. Himself an amateur with the brush, he was acutely concerned about the almost thoughtless scatter of her best work over many countries. She mentioned a decade in which she had done her finest painting and said that most of the pieces had been given away to various people at different times and in different places. The disciple said: "Should we not do something to collect them again?" The Mother calmly replied: "Why? Is it so important?" "Surely, such masterpieces deserve to be found and kept safely. You had taken so much pains over them." "It does not matter." "But, Mother, don't you think there will be a loss if they are not preserved?" Then the Mother, with eyes far away yet full of tenderness for the agitated disciple, said in a quiet half-whisper: "You know, we live in eternity ."

see also

Early Art Studies

Years in the Studio

Life among Artists

Théon and Algeria

Sojourn in Japan