The Kalpona Fine Art website is where you can view original paintings by Kalpona. You can also keep up-to-date with ongoing projects and contact the artist if you would like more information about her work.

Barkatun Poland (Kalpona) is a British artist who grew up in East London. Barkatun signs her artwork as ‘Kalpona’ as she is also known by this name by her family and close friends. Kalpona is her ‘daak naam’ (‘nick name’ in Bengali), a name which means ‘imagination’. Kalpona believes her name helped her to be creative from an early age as her parents often reminded her of the meaning.

Kalpona is a highly skilled portrait painter as well as an accomplished landscape artist. Her artistic talent was recognised and encouraged at school by her teachers, where she began to develop her distinctive style, using complex combinations of colour and texture. Whilst pursuing a career in education and raising a family, she continued to paint and was one of the first students to enrol on the Open College of the Arts course.

She works in both acrylics and oil paint, using brush and palette knife to build contrast and an underlying sense of drama and tension. This can clearly be seen in a series of paintings in which she explores her cultural roots in Bangladesh.

During lockdown she has been experimenting with a more abstract style with much of her work inspired by her daily walks, when she has been able to observe the changing colours and textures of seasons at close quarters over the course of a full year.