About Shubhangi Saxena · nature artist, India and London
On most walks, she is the one who has stopped.
It started close to home. Asked to choose a place to study, she looked around her own streets and found she kept returning to the wild patches. Moss in the seam of a pavement. A green edge along a boundary wall. Small lives in nobody's land, doing well without anyone's help.
So she began to keep them company. She photographs what stops her, carries it back, and draws it with the finest pen she owns, one line and then the next, for weeks and sometimes months. She does not hurry it. A drawing takes about as long as it takes to really know something.
She thinks of the drawings as listening. Moss is among the oldest plants there are. It has lived through rain and drought and return more times than anyone can count, and it has things to say to whoever gets low enough to hear. Each drawing is one of those conversations, written down.
Shubhangi is an Indian artist who works between India and London. Shilp Kalaa is the name she gives the practice. Alongside the drawings come books and boxes, installations you have to kneel for, and workshops where paper is made by hand.
Selected projects and exhibitions
- 2025
- Whispers on Bricks, at KaalChakra, Asylum Chapel, London
- 2025
- Watch Your Step, an ask of the city mosses. Book and box
- 2024
- Floor installations of drawings with found materials
- 2024
- Papermaking workshops
In brief
- Artist
- Shubhangi Saxena
- Studio
- Shilp Kalaa
- Known for
- Nature art: intricate, fine pen and ink drawings of moss and overlooked urban nature
- Medium
- Ink on paper, drawn by hand with a very fine pen
- Subjects
- Moss, pavement cracks, brick walls, forest floors, gardens, overgrown houses
- Also makes
- Artist's books and boxes, floor installations, papermaking workshops
- Based
- India and London, United Kingdom
- Shown
- Whispers on Bricks at KaalChakra, Asylum Chapel, London, September 2025
- Elsewhere
- Instagram @shilp_kalaa · LinkedIn
- Enquiries
- Commissions, exhibitions and collaborations
Questions people ask
Who is Shubhangi Saxena?
Shubhangi Saxena is an Indian nature artist and fine artist who works between India and London under the studio name Shilp Kalaa. She makes intricate pen and ink drawings of moss, forest floors and the small wild plants that live in the cracks of cities.
What is Shilp Kalaa?
Shilp Kalaa is the name of Shubhangi Saxena's art practice and of her Instagram account, @shilp_kalaa. It holds her ink drawings, her artist's books and boxes, her floor installations and her papermaking workshops.
What kind of art does she make?
Nature art, drawn by hand. Her fine art drawings are made in ink on paper with a very fine pen, and they show moss, brick walls, forest floors, gardens and the wild patches that grow where a pavement has split. Each sheet holds thousands of single lines.
How does a drawing begin?
With a walk. She stops where something small is growing, photographs it, stays with it, and only then draws. Whispers on Bricks followed six months of observing the mosses on two bricks of one boundary wall.
Where has her work been shown?
Whispers on Bricks was shown at KaalChakra, at the Asylum Chapel in London, in September 2025. Other projects include Watch Your Step, a book and box described as an ask of the city mosses, floor installations of drawings with found materials, and papermaking workshops.
Does she take commissions?
Yes. Shubhangi takes on a small number of commissioned drawings each year, and she welcomes enquiries from curators, galleries and collaborators. Write to her through the commissions page of this site or on Instagram at @shilp_kalaa.