Midnight Affairs

Akanksha has always found herself drawn to emotions—their depth, their contradictions, and the stories they quietly carry. For her, art became a way of exploring those emotions when words were not enough. She grew up far away from city lights, in a remote setting surrounded by the world of coal mines. Growing up there gave her a different way of seeing the world—a visual language shaped by the starkness of her surroundings, the simplicity of her childhood, and the richness of her imagination. She also comes from the land of Krishna, where mythology, spirituality, and stories of the divine are woven deeply into everyday life. That influence found its way into her artistic expression, often appearing through the themes, emotions, and symbolism in her work. Her relationship with art began when she was a young child. One day, overwhelmed by emotion and upset about something she could not quite put into words, she sat down on the floor and began to draw. She painted Shiva and Parvati. It was perhaps her first instinctive discovery that emotions could be expressed through colours and images. As a child, Akanksha often relied on the artistic abilities of people around her. She would ask her best friend to art homework for her. Once, she submitted a painting that had actually been made by a friend—and unexpectedly won a prize and received appreciation for it. The recognition brought her an emotion she could not quite explain. It wasn't simply the joy of winning. It was something deeper—the feeling of being seen and appreciated through art. That moment stayed with her. She went back and recreated the same painting, this time by herself. And so began a quiet journey of learning through observation, imitation and persistence. She would look at artwork created by others, try to reproduce it, experiment with it, and slowly understand what she liked and what spoke to her. Over time, the copies became experiments. The experiments became expressions. And eventually, the expressions became her own. Somewhere along the way, Akanksha stopped trying to paint like someone else. She found her own language. Today, her paintings are an extension of that journey—a conversation between emotion, memory, colour and imagination. What began as a little girl sitting on the floor, painting through her emotions, has grown into a lifelong exploration of finding stories on canvas. For Akanksha, art is not just about creating something beautiful. It is about giving emotions a colour, giving memories a form, and sometimes, simply giving the unspoken a place to exist.