About
Sakshi Jain
A painter based in Canada and an art educator originally from India.
Biography
Sakshi is a painter based in Canada and an art educator originally from India. Her relationship with art began early, when she was the student who carried an oversized sketchbook to school, making room for it by rationing space in her textbooks. Encouraged by her school art teacher to pursue fine art, she went on to study painting at Bharati Vidyapeeth University in Pune, where she completed a Bachelor of Fine Arts with a specialization in Printmaking.
Her work has continued to evolve since her formal training, while carrying forward ways of thinking shaped by printmaking: building through layers, planning carefully, trusting process, and paying attention to what is left out as much as what is added.
Watercolour on paper has become an important part of her recent practice, particularly for its transparency, the movement of water, and the unexpected shifts that happen through layering. Her subjects move between trees and landscape, Jain temple and cave sculptures, people, animals, and observations from everyday life.
Sakshi has also been teaching for several years. She taught drawing, painting, watercolour, and art fundamentals in India for five years, working with students ranging from four to eighty years old, including those preparing portfolios for design school. She now works as an artist instructor in Canada and leads workshops alongside her studio practice. Teaching continues to shape the way she thinks about looking, learning, and making.
Moving from India to Canada has opened up new space for experimentation, while also changing the way she looks at India, Canada, and her own practice.
Artist Statement
My name is Sakshi, which means witness.
It is the simplest way to describe how I move through the world and how I make art. I don’t begin by inventing. I begin by seeing. As clearly, as quietly, as completely as I can.
I once saw a tree so old and generous, I ran to it and hugged it like it was my grandfather. I still carry that feeling.
I work slowly, building and lifting layers of pigment, allowing water to move across paper, leaving some marks and erasing others. I return often to transparent layers, not to cover, but to stay open.
I come from India and now live in Canada. I carry both with me, not as opposites, but as two homes.
I witness what is in front of me. Sometimes it is ancient. Sometimes it is contemporary. Sometimes it belongs to one home, sometimes another. I stay open to all of it.
I believe in the handmade. In the language of touch and texture. In staying close to what’s fleeting and what quietly endures.
To hold what is already here, until it becomes enough.
I don’t make work to explain.
I make it to witness.