Chitra Ramanathan Statement and biography on CULTUREINSIDE

Chitra Ramanathan

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

Collection College Of Medicine University Of Illinois At Urbana Champaign Painting

Untitled, Mixed media with rice paper on canvas, owned by and permanently displayed in the College of Medicine, University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign, Illinois, U.S.A

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 (photo above), Charity auctions include the Madame C.J. Walker Theatre Center's Eightieth Anniversary Benefit Auction 2006, and a custom-created painting based on the 1979 Hollywood movie "'Breaking Away" for the Indianapolis International Film Festival, 2008.

Site-specific public art commission for MGM Mirage, Las Vegas 2004, pair of signed 4 ft x 6 ft paintings on permanent display inside the Bellagio Conservatory Botanic Garden, Las Vegas

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 sized 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, this March 2008 site-specific public art 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 that are permanently housed inside the Bellagio Conservatory and Botanical Gardens, Las Vegas since 2004 (photo above), 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 such as the Kansas State University's department of art, and Royal Academy of Arts/Royal Academy Schools London in 2005, an invitation from 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 lectures and freelance projects/commissions.

"Exuberance", Private collection, New York, USA,Chitra Ramanathan

"Exuberance", Private collection, New York, USA
1997, Acrylics on canvas, large scale conceptual landscape painting

5 feet x 6 feet

Quotes of Chitra Ramanathan from the media:

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.

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