Chitra | contemporary abstract conceptual paintings
Website of Chitra Ramanathan, freelance artist and art educator. Please click on the "Contact" link on this page for all inquiries.
About the artist
Unique features:
* Artist Chitra Ramanathan's extensive body of paintings portraying happiness as a visual entity with a "formless form", created through intense colors and varieties of found texture materials
* Predominantly large-scale painting
Chitra Ramanathan's body of mixed-media paintings are characterized by intense colours and multiple layers of textures that interact with light to "challenge the boundaries of their two-dimensional surfaces", inspired by the short-lived garden blooms and cyclical seasons that the artist compares with the continually evolving, ephemeral, fleeting happiness' "formless form": a phrase she has coined to describe her concept. Hints of circles signify the human life-cycle, trying times followed by happy phases and of life and rebirth influenced by her roots from India. Her paintings on varied surfaces have been described as "tactile works that resonate with a quiet harmony" by Manhattan Arts International magazine, New York.
Her work has attracted visiting artist lectures to institutions within the U.S and abroad, including a 2005 invitation from Professor Dr. Maurice Cockrill to London's Royal Academy of Arts for a visual presentation of her body of work and conducting student tutorials at the Royal Academy Schools.
Chitra earned her Bachelors of Fine Arts in Painting with Honours in 1993 from the College of Art and Design at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA, during which period she also allotted time to study Painting and Art History in Paris, France, with extended time spent at Claude Monet's garden in Giverny, France and other parts of Europe that influenced her later work. She completed a M.B.A from the same university in 1997.
She is Painting Faculty in Drawing, Acrylics, and Mixed-media Painting at the Indianapolis Art Center, USA, accepting invitational visiting artist lectures, adjunct professor positions, artist residencies, collaborative team projects, exhibition jury requests, site-specific public art commissions, freelance assignments, and invitations to teach courses from educational institutions.
** If you discover credit omissions or have additional information to add, please let us know at registrar@AskART.com.
Media quotes of Chitra Ramanathan
"I feel happiness is like a garden. Seasons change and it's the same with the mental state of happiness. (Optimistically) good times follow difficult phases in life - it's a cyclical concept"..
..I wish to continue painting as long as I live. I would like to work on more public and corporate art commissions, maybe liven up buildings and offices that people see every day..." - Interview profile by Della Pacheco, Women in Business section, the Indianapolis Business Journal, Indiana U.S.A, April 2007.
"I consider happiness to be irresistible, fleeting, and ephemeral. You can never really capture it but instead imagine it in so many colorful ways. I try to put these emotions down each time I set out to create.
Right from the beginning, I think of the visual impact of my finished paintings being exposed to natural versus artificial light and of different times of day, because of the presence of iridescent hues in many a piece. Similarly, textures can "play" with the eye when viewed under different light settings. I have progressively explored methods to capture the best effects of color, light and texture Color, light and texture play very important roles in my work, as well as process and minute details in the tradition of Indian Miniatures" - Interview profile by Melissa Merle, The News-Gazette.com, Illinois U.S.A, 2003.
"My drawings are the backbones of my paintings."
"I feel fortunate that my work has got accepted so favorably - people who come across my paintings on various websites have been writing to me, and many have become collectors of my work. I am thankful that my work has traveled to different parts of the U.S and Europe. I have done a fair amount of donating work to worthy causes. Currently some of my paintings are designated for auction, proceeds from sales to reach organizations committed that benefit causes that benefit children on a global scale.
"Water - I love water! It is so essential for life on our planet. Rivers, seascapes - anything portraying the vast expanses of it in different kinds of lighting might be interesting" (When asked about the most beautiful thing (featuring landscape as subject) to paint - Profile interview by Kasey Jackson,The Indianapolis Star Media Group: Fishers Geist Magazine, Indiana, USA July 2007.
