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About the artist

Trademark:

* Artist Chitra Ramanathan's extensive body of paintings portraying happiness as a visual entity with a "formless form" through unique abstract figuration with intense colors and variety of found texture materials
* The artist's mixed-media paintings on and behind Plexiglas and anodized aluminum

*Predominantly large-scale work

Biography:

Born in Thiruvananthapuram, India, Chitra Ramanathan is a contemporary Indian American visual artist and educator. She produces predominantly large scale abstract conceptual mixed media paintings, drawings, prints, site-specific installation works, and sculpture that have been exhibited in art galleries in SoHo, Broadway Manhattan, New York, solo exhibition at the ARC Gallery & Educational Foundation at Chicago, and more recently a 2006 solo retrospective exhibition of her body of work at the Indianapolis Artsgarden, Circle Center, Indianapolis.

Several of her colorful mixed media paintings are owned by individual and corporate collectors around the United States and in Europe including educational institutions such as the College of Medicine at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Charity auctions include Eightieth Anniversary Benefit Auction 2006 at venue of the Madame C.J. Walker Theatre Center, Indianapolis, Indiana, USA. and a custom-created painting based on the 1979 Hollywood movie "'Breaking Away" for the Indianapolis International Film Festival, 2008/2009.

Commissions include a series of post-card paintings, as commission for the Florida International University Department of Art, Miami, Florida, 2005 (to coincide with Art Basel Miami 2005) and a series of ten post-card paintings for the Indianapolis Museum of Art's "Gallery of the Machine" in 2006.

Site-specific public art commissions include a permanent wall mural measuring 13.8 feet wide and 4 feet high for the front lobby of Crooked Creek Elementary School, Marion County, Indianapolis, Indiana, USA completed in April 2008, project made possible through a grant to the school by the Metropolitan School Foundation, a public school district in Indianapolis, a pair of large paintings for the MGM Mirage permanently housed inside the Bellagio Conservatory indoor Botanical Gardens, Las Vegas since 2004 and site-specific installation of five large-scale mixed-media paintings by the Arts Council of Indianapolis at Chase Towers near Monument Circle Indianapolis in 2006-2007, an annual project supported by the Indianapolis Cultural Development Commission.

Academically, Chitra Ramanathan's work has attracted visiting artist lectures to educational institutions the Royal Academy of Arts/Royal Academy Schools London in 2005, an invitation from RA Keeper and Head Maurice Cockrill, RA.

Chitra earned her second Bachelors of Fine Arts in Painting with Honors in 1993 during which period she also allotted time to study Painting and Art History in Paris, France, with extended visits to Giverny, France that influenced her later work. Earlier, she received a Bachelors degree in Fine Arts from Stella Maris College, Chennai, India.

She lives and works in the United States, while accepting travels worldwide for invitational visiting artist lectures, exhibition jury public art commissions and freelance projects.

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 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.

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 to benefit childrens' causes globally. 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...

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.


Favorite art quote:
Happiness... it lies in the joy of achievement, in the thrill of creative effort-Vincent Van Gogh

"Chitra" from the Sanskrit language means a picture or painting. My present career as a conceptual artist emerged after I received my Bachelors degree in Painting in the 1990s. Student years at the University of Illinois led to an opportunity for a solo exhibition at the Arc Gallery/Educational Foundation at Chicago in 1994 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. During this time, I received the Binney and Smith Inc. Liquitex Student Grant Award for 1994 and 1995. The award is a designation for "Outstanding achievement in the Painting discipline".

In the meantime, I began developing what emerged as a thematic body of paintings comparing the mental emotion of Happiness as a visual entity as fleeting and ephemeral, to short-lived garden blooms and continually evolving seasons. intense colors and variety of textures when combined with any light situation visually"challenge" the boundaries of their two-dimensional surfaces. The abstract figuration alluding to human forms and the presence of circles in my work signify 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.

Drawing and painting since the age of four when I was enrolled in a weekend art school for children, I grew up entering competitions and earning prizes since from an early age while growing up in India. Some notable memories include an evening when one of my watercolor paintings being exhibited at the Birla Academy of Art & Culture Kolkata India and being awarded a silver trophy by eminent sculptor Chintamani Kar, then principal of the Govt. College of Art and Craft, Kolkata at the age of eleven or twelve. Prior at age of ten, I was declared a winner in a national child art competition organized by Hindustan Unilever Limited, India. The early shows led to my seeking higher education earning a Bachelors degree in Fine Arts from Stella Maris College, Chennai India. After moving to the United States in the 1980s, I continued making art, and earned a second Bachelors degree in Painting with honors from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1993, followed by a M.B.A in Human Resources and Art Museum Administration in 1997, in between, completing my M.B.A summer internship in 1996 at the New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York.

My mission is to continue painting and working as long as I live. I am interested in donating my work to charitable causes. Recent events include the Madame C.J. Walker Theatre's 80th Anniversary Benefit Auction in 2006, the Indiana Hospice Program in 2007, followed by a custom created painting based on the 1979 Hollywood movie "Breaking Away" placed on auction for the Indianapolis International Film Festival, 2008/2009.

My journey as an artist has evolved over time from a representational background of my childhood and adolescent years in India to the present phase of pure abstraction, during which I have developed a significant body of work on the theme of portraying Happiness as a visual entity. Many pieces from this series are owned by individual collectors and corporations including educational institutions around the United States and in Europe. I have been teaching courses and workshops in Acrylics and Mixed-media Painting which are the typical mediums of my own work, at the Indianapolis Art Center, Indiana, USA while being open to invitations worldwide for visiting artist lectures such as an invitation to speak about my work and conduct student tutorials from the current Keeper and Head of the Royal Academy of Arts, RA Schools London in 2005, which was an enormous encouragement towards sharing my work with my expanding family of like-minded people worldwide, or to accept art commissions globally.

I am a current member of the Committee for Diversity Practices of the College Art Association, New York, (2007-2010) . I have served as a volunteer at the Lilly House and Oldfields Gardens at the Indianapolis Museum of Art, being a member of the museum since 2004.

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