Amita Sen Gupta
Painting & Prints
Lives and works in Toronto, Canada
Amita Sen Gupta is a painter working and living in Toronto. Her work explores object and emotion, and the way matter holds memory. Subjects, such as worn shoes, vacant and condemned buildings, and dream-like landscapes, evoke memory and loss in our fleeting lives.
"Amita’s current series of paintings highlight Light to Dark, and Dark to Light. Through the darkness there is light, and it is the luminosity of light, in particular, that is the overall encompassing focus in these paintings."
With thin layers of oil, washes and dry brush, these paintings have a certain quietness and breathing space to them. Amita's paintings have been exhibited in group shows, and at various galleries, cultural centres, and corporations throughout Ontario, including The Art Gallery of Hamilton, The Gladstone Hotel, Mercedes Benz Financial, and Art Rental + Sales Gallery at the Art Gallery of Ontario.
“Day's end. Its last hurrahs propel me outside beneath the curtain of colours that light up the sky. I witness swift fleeting moments and dramatic views in awe and wonder. Every microsecond of the changing sky reveals an epic story. I anticipate each chapter. How will the story end?”
Every evening, a whole new story unfolds with different lights, colours, tones, and shades—never the same sky twice.
These paintings were born out of a desire to capture the awe and luminosity of the day's changing light through tone, texture, and the movement of brushstrokes. Each painting is worked in layers of paint thinned with mineral spirits, glazes and dry brush to help translate the light of these captured moments.
The inception of Amita’s fascination with impermanence as subject matter began during her final year in Florence at the Ontario College of Art and Design’s off-campus program. There, she developed her first body of work, and was awarded with a scholarship for her Shoe series, Matter Holding Memory. Over the years, the objects of impermanence have grown to include condemned vacant buildings and the play of light in the landscape.
