It’s about the drawing
Monotype, woodcut, etching, screenprint and lithograph are all printmaking techniques Natasha Kumar has studied and specialised in for 30 years+ to ensure that all her artworks are first generation works drawn and created by her and are originals in their own right.
Born 1976 UK
Art and India are in Kumar’s genes. On her mother’s English side she comes from a line of established artists and fine figurative painters: her father’s Indian heritage she traces back to Kashmir and Afghanistan via stories of partition and lost family gold.
She has made her own name as an artist from the age of 17, when, earning a place by right in the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition she found her etchings hanging on the same wall as paintings by her grandfather and uncle.
Kumar began with a local art foundation course and a distinction in printmaking. A first class degree in printmaking at Manchester followed, where her love of multiples and repetition flourished.
Pattern is in my DNA, I grew up surrounded by wallpaper and fabrics by my great uncle, George Todd, a rather colourful character and terrific designer. I never got to meet him but he was a inspiration.
She studied printmaking and anatomy in the Venice Accademia and completed her MA in printmaking in Camberwell in London in 2000, winning the London Printmaking Prize the same year. She established her own print workshop in Camberwell and her reputation grew over the next 20 years through the support of clients, successful exhibitions, events and art fairs worldwide.
She has had a five month solo show in Southbank, six 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 also pops up in less traditional art venues such as Heathrow VIP Lounge, Science Museum, The Institute of Neurology, The Taj Hotel, and the familiar, Asia House, Southbank and Saatchi.
She contributes to charities; Pratham UK, NSPCC, Art for Cure | Breast Cancer and Wellchild and is a judge for the Never Such Innocence annual art competition. In 2012 she was selected to design a BT ARTBOX, as part of the celebrations for 25 years of ChildLine. Her version of the classic K2 kiosk was inspired by rangoli, the Indian folk art in which colourful geometric patterns are painted on floors to welcome guests and bring good fortune which she reinterpreted using her imagery of Hindu god, Krishna.
A more unusual 3d fertility phallus was exhibited at Mark Shand’s Adventures & His Cabinet of Curiosities in 2018 for the Elephant Family. In 2024 Natasha was 1 of 12 artists contributing to the Little Egg Hunt, in Chelsea, London – a precursor to the 2025 Big Egg Hunt when 200 eggs were auctioned to raise money and awareness for the Elephant Family’s conservation works.
The Indian street art collection was installed in Vivek Singh’s, Cinnamon Soho for six months, her architectural series incorporated into a permanent wall design in Kricket, Soho. In early 2025 she created two bespoke artworks for Kricket, Shoreditch.
In 2018 Soho House purchased a collection for their Mumbai venture, Juhu Beach, and Harland Miller personally selected her work from an international range of artists for the Rise Printmaking Prize.
2019 Flight Logistics Group | ShipArt ® saw the wrapping of a van in Natasha Kumar’s art – Great India a striking, colourful montage of her work, an un-missable presence in and around London today.
In 2023 – Kumar was extremely proud to be able to share her collaboration x Tilda on an exclusive one-of -a – kind rice tin, distributed in stores across the UK and Europe.
Tilda are a brand I have grown up close to my heart. This is a celebration of food, culture and colours of the sub-continent, it’s an all dancing, drumming and trumpeting tin!
Natasha’s 2024 exhibition THE COLOURS IN BETWEEN was ultimate expression of her artistic identity to date, combining her latest work, and her most significant of the last four decades, in a deeply personal way. Four palettes for four decades and four moods, curated in the show as Travelling with Hope and Within Reach, Untold Stories and Other Worlds.
The collections were curated to evoke the senses of sight, touch and smell through works on paper, tactile textiles and actual fragrance.
Her latest collaboration, with Harrods, was in store and online throughout Diwali 2025.
My Diwali is synonymous with celebration, culture and colour. I was delighted to be invited to collaborate with Harrods on a design that would connect in so many different ways, not only in store but across the digital world and into the rhythm of everyday life.
Kumar divides her time between thinking space a rural farmhouse with dedicated painting and printmaking studios, intense studio practice in London and increasingly longer regular working trips to India to gather images and ideas. Of course, it’s always an excuse to catch up with family – I miss those chapatis and the chatter – I just love it all, I absorb it like a sponge. When I get back to the studios I am bursting with new ideas. I love sharing that feeling through my work and when I meet people. A passion and practice firmly established as the words ‘a trip of a lifetime’ was the overwhelming response from the WEXAS travellers she took to the places in India that had most inspired her work
Kumar firmly believes in personal interaction with her collectors telling the story, is so important and gives depth, so you will always find her chatting on the stands at Fairs and exhibitions. She has had her own gallery stand at the Affordable Art Fair for 25 years (representing other artists with whom she had an affinity)
Kumar has a worldwide dedicated and growing following of collectors for her original works.
Catch the latest on instagram…
@natashakumarart
