Samiksha Gupta - Contemporary Painter
.jpg)
I am a contemporary painter who draws inspiration from nature, people, places, culture and everyday scenes to paint pictures.
My paintings have a mix of a direct, alla prima style brushwork, and at places more sculpted and layered in the traditional, indirect approach. While my work requires working from my studio - I feel most alive while painting plein air, out in the open, from life. In the more recent times, I am finding myself painting flatter, and modern.
I began with studying Realism under the instructions of masters of Western Classical art in Florence, Italy, and then took one - on - one mentorship from a senior artist trained at Studio Escalier in France.
I have a background in business management. It is perhaps a mix of my curious bend of mind, experiences in travels to the West as a child, and a creative spirit, that led to this deeper self-discovery in 2018, revealing a natural talent for painting portraits.
Mostly self-taught, I study old masters, and get mentorship from skilled European painters. I constantly consume and note/ collect/ record visual information - through travel, photos, paintings of other living artists, social media, fashion etc. and try to teach myself of new ideas. Many a sights appear as potential painting elements.
Currently, I am working on paintings that include organic forms - fruits, flowers, plants - that are likely to appear frequently if not always in my designs. A close example could be the luminous textured quality of fresco painting and am finding myself painting in that manner but on linen and paper.
In this exploratory journey as primarily a self taught painter, supported by the mentorship of more experienced artists that I cherish, I am finding myself going against the earthy limited palette taught in ateliers and painting very colorful pictures, and now slowly and gradually moving into a more balanced palette, but with a better understanding of color relationships
I am an alumni of the London School of Economics in the UK and Lady Shri Ram College for Women in India.
Education
2007 - 2008
London School of Economics
2004 - 2007
Lady Shri Ram College for Women