Natasha Kumar

It’s about the drawing 

Oil painting, watercolour, pastel, monotype, woodcut, etching, screenprint and lithograph are all techniques Natasha Kumar has studied and specialised in for 25 years+  to ensure that all her artworks are first generation works drawn and created by her and are originals in their own right.

Natasha Kumar | Printmaking Studio | working on a drypoint

Natasha Kumar | Printmaking Studio | working on a drypoint

Natasha’s work offers a very genuine feel of India. Her father is Indian, and she often visits for long periods. She loves colour, obviously a very Indian thing in itself.

She is very excited by opposites; writing in advertisements contrasted with the bright colours of fabric, or the lonely cow. Her use of script is very contemporary, and the resulting image, through its clarity and design proclaims itself. It is both atmospheric and compact.

In hand with this delight in oppositions goes a personal conundrum, how to reconcile her Indian side with its passionate love of colour, with her English upbringing, which urges her to draw as correctly as possible, potentially exerting restraint on her feelings. She faces the two remarkably well, cutting out the sentimental and achieving a vital freshness in her work.

I am always struck by how vivid her paintings are, and how evocative are her prints.

Suboph Gupta, Bharti Kher, Jitish Kallat, Natasha Kumar and Rashid Rana (who was born in Pakistan) are among other names you’ll see performing well in contemporary auctions and on view in upcoming exhibitions. “There’s a whole generation of artists who were born after 1958 who can still be undervalued,” says Yamini Mehta, Christie’s head of modern and contemporary Indian art.

Natasha Kumar with her parents | Asia House 2010

Born Manchester 1976

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. 

Natasha Kumar | Manchester Fine Art Degree Show 1999 | 15 works combining Etching, mono print emboss and gold leaf, 5 Plaster casts with sindoor pigment.

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 5 month solo show in Southbank, 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.

Natasha Kumar | RASA | The Royal Geographical Society, London

She 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, most recently the NSPCC, Art for Cure | Breast Cancer and Wellchild.  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. A more unusual 3d fertility phallus was exhibited at Mark Shand’s Adventures & His Cabinet of Curiosities in 2018 for the Elephant Family.

Natasha Kumar | Rangoli K2 | BT – Childline

The 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.

Natasha Kumar and RUN FOR THE HILLS Design for KRICKET SOHO

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.

NATASHA KUMAR | FLIGHT LOGISTICS GROUP | GREAT INDIA VAN

Another collaboration in 2019 with 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.

October – December  2023 – Kumar is 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! 

TILDA X NATASHA KUMAR COLLABORATION 2023

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 studio 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 clients she took to her favourite and most inspirational places in India.

Natasha Kumar | RASA – Essence of India Tour

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 Art Fairs and exhibitions.

Kumar has a worldwide dedicated and growing following of collectors for her original and unique prints and more recently, her oil paintings.

Catch the latest here…
@natashakumarart

Natasha Kumar | Affordable Art Fair | Indian Woman #Dipti

Affordable Art Fair | Natasha Kumar

Natasha Kumar | Chakra | Royal Geographical Society, London 2012