CAL AKARA LEWIS
contact for available works, collaborations & commissions:
studio@calakara.com
contact for available works, collaborations & commissions:
studio@calakara.com
BIO
Cal Akara Lewis (b. 1991, Bradford, UK) is a surrealist artist and facilitator. Based nomadically since 2022, he develops an ongoing body of paintings exploring the human inner landscape.
After graduating Nottingham Trent University in Design for Film (2013), working creatively in the electronic music scene, and exhibiting early works in the UK - studies in the inner sciences inspired a move to Asia for a travelling lifestyle and practice.
Integrating meditative methodologies into his creativity, Cal has developed an introspective practice and philosophy. Akara, his long-term public project, offers the practice to a shared space, merging with his experience as a traditional yoga teacher.
Pivotal to his artistic development were extended residencies in India (2022–2024). Since then, he has represented independently, engaging global communities through murals, workshops, and works on linen.
ARTISTS STATEMENT
Integrating meditative methodologies into his creativity, Cal has developed an introspective practice and philosophy. Akara, his long-term public project, offers the practice to a shared space, merging with his experience as a traditional yoga teacher.
Pivotal to his artistic development were extended residencies in India (2022–2024). Since then, he has represented independently, engaging global communities through murals, workshops, and works on linen.
ARTISTS STATEMENT
Living and working nomadically brings a calm spontaneity to my life and practice, whilst often providing a cultural framework for my introspective philosophy. I have developed a process of internal visual investigation, translating the colours of my inner space into the foundations of my paintings.
In my twenties, struggles with mental health became the catalyst for my commitment to art. Turning inward, painting became a means of clarity. This path led me to India and the study of traditional yoga, revealing that what we seek externally exists within us - It is this inward search that drives me.
Working in the spirit of the twentieth-century surrealists, I use painting to examine the mind; however I am less concerned with psychoanalysis and more interested in embracing spontaneity as a pathway toward introspective awareness.
On organic linen, I construct layered compositions that retain negative space and exposed seams, creating structural tension against saturated colour. I explore visual memories and ideas through mark-making informed by optical phenomena and retinal distortions.
Through this process, the paintings translate personal revelations into shared space, inviting stillness, reflection, and connection to one’s own evolution.
Through this process, the paintings translate personal revelations into shared space, inviting stillness, reflection, and connection to one’s own evolution.