Shubhi Gupta, an Indian artist based in Singapore, has spent nearly ten years developing a distinctive voice within contemporary art. Her practice moves fluidly between still life and portraiture, creating images that feel intimate yet expansive. Gupta approaches her subjects with curiosity, choosing to study the small rituals, emotions, and gestures that form daily human experience. This attentive way of seeing has taken her work into respected circles: her paintings have been acquired by the Standard Chartered Bank in Hong Kong, as well as by private collectors around the world. Living and working in Singapore, Gupta draws insight from cultural movement, memory, and the layered identity that forms from crossing borders and adapting to new environments. Her approach to painting is rooted in material play and emotional reflection, using portraiture to open windows into the values and behaviours of childhood, adulthood, and the quiet spaces in between.
Scattered Wonder 2 & 3 (2025) sits at the centre of Shubhi Gupta’s artistic direction, bringing together painting, sculptural additions, and symbolic storytelling. Through these works, Gupta continues her interest in the emotional depth found within ordinary moments. Rather than painting childhood as nostalgia or fantasy, she brings attention to the small psychological truths that form in a child’s mind long before language fully arrives.
The works show a young girl at play: a figure who bends toward tiny sprinkles scattered across a textured surface. This girl is not a portrait of a specific individual. She carries universal familiarity—the kind that allows viewers to remember their own childhood gestures, or the gestures of children they love. Gupta uses this imagined figure as a doorway into questions about freedom, focus, and inner life.
The materials in these paintings—oil paint, synthetic hair, toys, clay sprinkles, and 3D printing filament—are not decorative experiments but vital elements of the narrative. They introduce physical dimension to the surface, echoing the chaos of childhood play. The clay sprinkles lie across the linen like fragments of thought, giving shape to the scatter of a child’s imagination. Synthetic hair adds presence, almost like memory stitched into the canvas. What emerges is a world that is more tactile than illusion, inviting viewers into sensory territory.
Oil paint serves as the emotional temperature of the work. Gupta applies it with softness and restraint, letting subtle colour shifts create atmosphere. The girl exists inside a dreamlike visual space: not a home, not a landscape, not a playground. It is a space free from adult architecture. This choice removes context that might have distracted from the internal world she wants to express. Childhood here becomes a separate realm, ruled by feeling rather than by environment.
In Scattered Wonder 2 & 3, the young girl leans into her task with full attention. This choice speaks to Gupta’s interest in how children operate before self-consciousness forms. The girl is not performing. She is not aware of being watched or interpreted. She is absorbed. Gupta emphasizes that this absorption—this deep focus—is where joy lives. For many adults, such focus is rare. For children, it is natural.
The paintings also reveal a contrast between fragility and strength. The sprinkles she plays with are tiny, easily lost or brushed aside, yet they carry meaning. Children often turn small objects into powerful symbols. A sprinkle becomes a mountain. A toy becomes a companion. Gupta honours this transformation, presenting imagination not as a childish escape but as a system through which children build identity.
The textile quality of the works is particularly important. By embedding material directly into the painted surface, Gupta erases the line between image and object. This reflects how childhood memories often blur: part fact, part fantasy, part feeling. The sprinkles and hair create a real texture the viewer can almost touch, echoing the physical closeness children have with the world.
What makes these works emotionally resonant is their stillness. Even though childhood is often shown as active movement, Gupta chooses to depict calm attention. The girl appears comfortable in solitude, content to explore without guidance. This view challenges modern anxieties around childhood productivity and structured learning. Gupta suggests that wonder grows naturally when a child is allowed to wander.
The use of synthetic hair stands out most intensely. It adds a bodily presence that feels both human and surreal, expanding the portrait into territory between painting and sculpture. The hair hints at identity—it makes the figure specific, yet still anonymous enough to represent many children. The 3D printing filament introduces a modern material into a timeless scene, implying that childhood remains consistent even as culture transforms.
Overall, Scattered Wonder 2 & 3 celebrate simple discovery. In these works, delight emerges from touching, sorting, and seeing. The girl’s world is not a metaphor for adulthood; it belongs only to her. Gupta encourages viewers to recognise that childhood wonder does not need explanation or improvement. It needs space.
These paintings remind us that the most meaningful joys are often quiet, private, and unguarded. Gupta’s artistic language respects the purity of early imagination, offering not a memory of childhood, but an encounter with it. Through her layered materials and gentle gaze, she gives shape to a truth that often disappears with age: that small things, when seen with curiosity, become enormous.
