Kalpna Saksena

BIO

A London-based artist, Kalpna is inspired by the urban scenes that surround her and places she has been fortunate to visit. Her paintings resonate with the images and colours of her early childhood in India and a family love of art inherited from her father.

Kalpna’s artwork ranges from representational to semi-abstract, often deconstructed to present alternate perspectives that invite the viewer to engage and interpret. Her fascination lies in portraying people and their environments, from buildings to machinery to everyday objects, in an abstracted reality memories that reflects our memories and recollections. She likes to draw in the viewer to explore the whole painting, hoping that each artwork evokes a different response for each viewer.

Kalpna works mostly in oils, occasionally using acrylics to build up the underpainting layers or to create a tension between the matte of acrylics and lustre of oil. The medium and process applied are a response to the image as in construction site paintings of the South Bank, Marble Arch and Piccadilly, where the paintings are built up with layers of scumbled brushstrokes, to a more ephemeral feel as in ‘Khan Market’ created by a reductive process.

In 2021 Kalpna was part of the televised show ‘Sky Arts Landscape Artist of the Year’, winning her heat to reach the semi-finals. She actively engages with various art societies and clubs in London. Kalpna considers herself privileged to have been under the tutelage of incredibly gifted artist and tutor, Angela Pearcey, and remains a member of her studio group.

Kalpna has been exhibiting with Skylark Galleries on London’s Southbank and regularly draws and paints with the life drawing society, Hesketh Hubbard, at The Mall Galleries, regularly attending open events and challenges with other FBA member societies such as Royal Institute of Oil Painters and the Pastel Society.

Recent Exhibitions/Competitions

Hesketh Hubbard Life Drawing Club XYZ Gallery June 2025

The OXO Tower April 2025

The Female Form- Gallery at Books on the Rise May 2024

Affordable Art Fair Autumn 2023 – Battersea

Sky Landscape Artist 2021 – Winner of Heat to reach the Semi-finals

54 The Gallery, Shepherd Market, London, 23-27 July 2019 – Solo show

Pinner Sketch Club Annual Exhibition 10-23 August 2023

The Hesketh Hubbard Art Society, Mall Galleries, 12-18 August 2019

Cahoots Art at The Etz Chayim Gallery, 16 September-28 October 2019