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Nilima Sheikh (born 1945, New Delhi) is an Indian painter with a focus on woman-centric themes and narrative as the basis of her work.

Life and career
Nilima Sheikh was born in 1945 in New Delhi, India. Sheikh studied history at Delhi University between 1962 and 1965 and received her Master of Fine Arts from the Faculty of Fine Arts, Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda in 1971. She was exposed to artists like Kanwal Krishna, Devayani Krishna and K.G. Subramanyan and attributes the older Santiniketan experiment, Baroda's weightage to art history and her earlier education in history as major influences.

Sheikh who originally trained in Western-style oil painting later transitioned to a self-taught miniature painter due to her interests in asian historical traditions of painting. She has also stated to be influenced by pre-modern Rajput and Mughal court paintings, especially traditional tempera paintings like Pichhwai and  Thangka paintings.

After the inner turmoil that she experienced post the Gujarat riots in 2002, she was spurred o take up a long-pending art project that dealt with the Kashmiri poet Agha Shahid Ali’s soul-stirring verses full of pain that inspired it. Nilima Sheikh won’t term references in her work as religious, but more art historical in nature, all part of a history that we tend to term tradition or mythology. Actually it is history, part of one’s past, she explains, adding that it’s not merely western art history.

Exhibitions
Individual Exhibitions
 * 1998 – Images from Umrao, Galerie FIA, Amsterdam
 * 1999 – Painted Drawings, Gallery Espace
 * 2003 – The Country Without A Post Office, Gallery Chemould
 * 2009 – Drawing Trails, Gallery Espace, Delhi, India
 * 2010 – Each Night Put Kashmir In Your Dreams - Chemould Prescott Road, India

Group Exhibitions
 * 2009 – Tracing Time - Works On Paper, Bodhi Art, Mumbai, India
 * 2013 – Touched by Bhupen, Galerie Mirchandani + Steinruecke, India, Colaba.
 * 2014 – Aesthetic Bind | Floating World, Chemould Prescott Rd, India, Colaba.
 * 2015 – 48th Annual Exhibition 2015, Birla Academy of Art and Culture, India, Calcutta.
 * 2016 – Revisiting Beauty, Gallery Threshold, India, New Delhi.