Natasha Kumar
BRITISH PAINTER AND PRINTMAKER
Art and India are in Kumar’s genes. On her mother’s English side she comes from a line of established artists; her father’s Indian heritage she traces back to Kashmir and Afghanistan. Her work is a dazzling exploration of colour and line as seen through the prism of contemporary Indian life.
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Natasha Kumar’s Utsava collection is a celebration of family and belonging. It combines ancient Indian aesthetic and identity through figurative representation and abstract sensibility. It is both traditional and contemporary. The overall design is unique but typical of Kumar’s style, a layering of different techniques rarely found in combination: drawing, etching and screenprinting, incorporating references to the architectural motifs such as the Jali window and pictorial elements from Mughal miniatures.
The drummers represent the beat of the heart, and the heart beats the rhythm of everyday life. The dancing women, hand in hand, capture a universal joyful human experience. The infinite geometric design is a signature Kumar motif, referencing the timeless nature of the dance, a microcosm against the macrocosm. The background also references an ancient Persian floral design, once woven into a carpet. The flowers are now contemporary, rice grains arranged into floral motifs and scattered liberally through the scene. Colour is an essential part of Indian existence: Kumar loves to use bold and compelling colour in her work to evoke mood and feeling.
She has made her own name as an artist from the age of 17, when she exhibited at the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition. This was followed by a first class degree in printmaking from Manchester Metropolitan University. She studied printmaking and anatomy in the Venice Accademia before completing her MA in printmaking at Camberwell College of Arts in London in 2000, winning the London Printmaking Prize the same year.
More recently she has been the subject of a five-month solo show in Southbank, participated in annual exhibitions at the Royal Geographical Society, and in 2015 gave a talk about her work - Rasa: Essence of India – in the famous Ondaatje Theatre. She pops up in less traditional art venues such as the Heathrow VIP Lounge, the Science Museum, and the Institute of Neurology, as well as at specific Indian events in The Taj Hotel, Asia House, Alchemy (Southbank) and at Saatchi.
Her Indian street art collection was installed in Vivek Singh’s Cinnamon Soho for six months, and her architectural series incorporated into wall design in Kricket, Soho. In 2018 Soho House purchased a number of pieces for their Mumbai venture Juhu Beach, and Harland Miller personally selected her work from an international range of artists for the Rise Printmaking Prize.
Kumar divides her time between a rural farmhouse with dedicated painting and printmaking studios, an intense studio practice in London, and increasingly longer regular working trips to India to gather images and ideas. Kumar has a dedicated and growing following of collectors worldwide.
2019 Eloquent Spaces: Sacred and Secular Indian Architecture, Railings Gallery, Marylebone
2018 Royal Geographical Society, London
2017 Essence of India, Stratford Gallery
2016 “Great India: Kumar at Kingly Court”, Cinnamon Soho, London
2015 RASA: Essence of India, Royal Geographical Society
2014 Southbank Centre, London
Unique
Etching, Collograph, Screenprint, Mixed Media and 22 Carat Gold Leaf
Image size: 70 x 107cm
Framed size: 97 x 134cm
£3300 Framed
Or £330 per month using Own Art payable in 10 equal interest-free monthly instalments