Artist Statement

ARTIST STATEMENT 

Current and future bodies of Work

Samiksha Gupta

                    

Potted Plant, a still life, 2022

 

My work explores the nuanced relationship between living beings, and the environment we inhabit, blending both the living (humans, plants and animals) and the non-living (material) elements to reflect the complexity of our world—creating a visual dialogue between organic and constructed realities. These elements come together through a wide spectrum of colors, layered textures, and carefully created contrasts, bringing to light themes of harmony, coexistence, and the evolving between nature and human life. 

 

As a contemporary painter, I am drawn to the quiet theater of everyday life — moments that unfold gently in nature, people, places, and objects around us. My work seeks to capture these fleeting instants of simplicity, where stillness, humor, and intimacy intersect.

 

Two Ducks & Water Irises, composition drawing, 2025

 

Nature serves as both my subject and collaborator. I observe its rhythms closely, translating them into compositions that balance representation with abstraction. Organic forms are distilled into geometric structures, allowing underlying patterns, harmonies, and subtle dialogues to emerge. This interplay between natural spontaneity and intentional design is central to my practice. 

 

As a visual storyteller, I am interested in elevating the ordinary — transforming familiar scenes into intimate visual narratives that invite viewers to pause, reflect, and notice. Within this simplicity, I find space for quiet humor and lightness, allowing my compositions to breathe with both playfulness and serenity. 

 

Study after Antonio Correggio, 2020

 

My medium is oil. Trained in classical art, I began with earthy, restrained palettes often emphasized on ateliers. Over time, I experimented with vibrant colors guided by intuition. Now, I'm finding a balance, developing a better understanding of color relationships while still paying attention to the instinctive impulses that have so far shaped my work. Rather than striving for naturalism or perspective, I imbibe in my work, clean edges, and a precision till it allows me to retain flow, authenticity and a compelling decorative quality. This has come through a great deal of introspection to find the courage to move beyond the constraints of technique taught in ateliers, and to experiment with my work.

 

In the more recent years, I have grown to become more curious about the Pre and Early Renaissance art, and am starting to draw from the flat, symbolic quality of painters such as Sandro Botticelli, Paolo Uccello, Fra Angelico amongst others. Now, I eagerly await to returning to Florence and visit the Uffizi Gallery with a new-found curiosity for the masters and discover ways in which to adapt and incorporate designs from antiquity into modern context. 

 

A Picnic in Sunflowers, composition drawing, 2025

 

My preference for softer colors and fresco-inspired textures imbues my work with an ethereal, timeless quality— however to continue my exploration of patterns, observation, abstraction and balancing of colors in organic forms with blocky stylization rather than strict realism. My paintings whilst moving towards the contemporary, still echo a chalky atmospheric finish of Italian churches and palazzos in almost every street of where I first learned to paint. In the process, I possibly connect with the viewer by stirring within her, her own nostalgia, a feeling of warmth that I often experience when I paint.

 

Through this synthesis of historical reference and contemporary sensibility, I aim to create narrative paintings that are both conceptual and visually appealing. Humor, lightness and relatability, qualities that I possess, permeate my work, offering a sense of playfulness while maintaining compositional serenity. While my paintings are representational, the careful integration of blockyness, repetitions and glitches affirm a quality rooted in the digital age.

 

Peace Lilies, 2025

 

My goal is to evoke joy, wonder, rest and a renewed awareness of the beauty found in everyday moments, particularly for those who find meaning in aesthetics and story– orchestrated by the source – the natural world.

 

Through painting, I reconnect with my most authentic self—a space where I feel present, grounded, and true.