Website of contemporary visual artist Chitra Ramanathan

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Statement

"Art washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life"- Pablo Picasso

Chitra Ramanathan, Celebration, 2009, Painting Other
Image above: "Celebration". Please click on image to view 2009 album

My present career as a conceptual artist emerged immediately after I received my Bachelors degree in Painting in the 1990s, having moved to the United States in 1984. An opportunity for a solo exhibition at the Arc Gallery/Educational Foundation at Chicago in 1994 was followed by exhibitions at different art galleries on Broadway's Soho District, New York City, New York that earned me many a praise from critics. Simultaneously, I received the Product Grant Award for 1994 and 1995 from Binney & Smith Inc, makers of Crayola Crayons. The award is a designation for "Outstanding achievement in the Painting discipline". 

My current body of thematic body of paintings compare the mental emotion of happiness as a visual entity that I define as fleeting and ephemeral to short-lived garden blooms and continually evolving seasons. The intense colors and variety of textural materials incorporated into the work interact with any light situation to visually "challenge" or create an experience for the viewer that extends beyond the confines of their two-dimensional surfaces.

Impressions of abstract figuration alluding to human forms and the presence of circles that are prominent features in almost all the pieces signify the ongoing human life-cycle, trying phases followed by happy spells in a positive sense and life and rebirth as influenced by my roots from India. Initial inspiration for my current body of work stemmed from observing Claude Monet's garden in Giverny, France during an extended visit to Paris and the rest of Europe on different occasions, one such dedicated to studying Painting and French Art History in 1992.

 My journey as an artist has evolved over time from a representational background of my childhood and adolescent years to the present phase of abstraction, during which I have developed a significant body of work on the theme of portraying happiness as a visual entity.submitgooglesitemap.com Sitemap Generator