Vidya Dengle is one of those fortunate artists who have most authentic training in the Guru-Shishya tradition in music and the most contemporary education in the best of colleges in India. She has therefore a rare gift of knowing the rich empirical knowledge of Hindustani Classical Music from Ustad Zahoor Ahmed Khan of the Delhi Gharana from whom she learnt to play the violin. She studied the fine art of painting and sculpture at the J J School of Art of from in the early seventies. What is significant about her is that she is a performing artist in both of these arts since the late seventies. She has been giving solo violin concerts in the Hindustani music and holding exhibitions of her paintings and ceramic sculptures most regularly in India and abroad. She finds that practicing the two arts has not only fascinating for her but it complements in comprehending life through audio-visual perceptions and synthesise the inner experience respectively in two dynamic mediums. Thinking and meditating life is the very nature of fine arts and our field of perceptions have a huge contribution to make to it. Over the years she has been teaching and conducting workshops both on music and painting and their interdisciplinary relationship. Her workshops on colour led her further to explain what she calls 'rootedness of arts in culture'. Symbolism, cultural nuances, and expression all have a symbiotic relationship with the place, people, and consciousness which arts explore every now and then through her works.
Besides being a regular performer on the All India Radio giving violin concerts, she has also played at a number of prestigious festivals in India. She has given concerts in Singapore, the UAE, the Sultanate of Oman, the USA, and France at a number of colleges, universities, and cultural groups. She has conducted workshops in Hindustani Classical music at various colleges in the USA in her four visits to that country since 1997. She has been honoured as the Guru at the Lalit Kala Kendra at Pune University and continues to impart traditional knowledge to a selected few disciples.
Her paintings in mixed media and acrylic have been exhibited in New Delhi, Mumbai, Pune, Bangaluru, Hyderabad, etc on several occasions. Her r paintings were selected to be exhibited in Germany by a private collector, when she had a unique distinction of holding an exhibition in Germany while also giving a violin concert in Paris! Recently she has been bringing the wealth of her knowledge and experience of nature, animals, birds –being a very keen bird watcher, in her writing of stories for children. She has published five books of animal, nature stories so far two of which have received prestigious literary awards.
