emilinoart
Mural Work
Alongside my landscape paintings, I take on mural projects in the places I travel to — usually for cafés and hostels. The work is often collaborative: I sit down with the owners, talk through what they want their space to feel like, and we come up with an idea together.
I like to think of a mural as more than just decoration. It's a way of building atmosphere — something that anyone who walks in can feel. People come to mountain places to escape, to slow down, to feel free, and I try to stay in line with that by creating dreamy, relaxing pieces that match the spirit of where they are.
Cafe 366, Bir, Himachal Pradesh
One of my favourite things about Bir is the way modern and traditional life exist so comfortably alongside each other. In the same scene you'll see paragliders, remote workers, fancy cafés, and local farmers coming back from the fields with heaps of hay on their backs. That's something I love about India — it isn't one or the other, it's everything at once.
I wanted to capture that feeling on their wall. I painted the Bir sunset, the rice terraces, the paragliders, the farmers walking with their animals, and a local woman glancing back with her haystack basket on her back, smiling with a quiet confidence.
Kurumba Hostel,
Ella, Sri Lanka
When I arrived at Kurumba Hostel, Hari wanted a portrait of Ganesh for the backdrop of his prayer altar. He showed me his favourite illustration of Ganesh, and I brought it to life on the wall.
View-topia,
Munnar, Kerala
Rainbow Hostel,
Leh Ladakh
When I arrived to Rainbow, Leh - the owner asked me to do a piece on their wall which represented the feeling of Ladkh to me. I used a scene from the mountain valleys I witnessed on my recent motorbike trip there. I chose to do a liney, melty type of feeling with a winding river coming towards you, drawing you into the valley.
A little piece I did in a mud house Airbnb in Kerala. The place was in the middle of the forest, tucked away under the trees — my entire stay had the soundtrack of birdsong, all day and night. As a gift to the owner, for his generosity, I brought some of the forest inside onto the walls.