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Artist Exhibitions:
Selected Exhibitions
2009 Exhibitions:
Invitational exhibition, The
Brevard Art Museum ,
Melbourne, Florida, USA. May
15 - July 12, 2009.
"A Postcard is Worth 1000
Words Exhibition", APW Gallery
Long Island City, New York,
USA. June 5 - June 29, 2009:
Past:
Bi-annual Faculty Exhibition,
Indianapolis Art Center,
Indianapolis, Indiana, USA.
September ...
Further Information
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Artist Galleries:
Coming Soon!
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Artist Reviews:
MAGAZINE REVIEWS & ARTICLES *
Indicates articles)
• * Profile: “Rendezvous
Artist”, Profile Article,
Indianapolis Star
Newspaper’s Fishers>Geist
Magazine, July/August 2007
• * ”Paintings Give Form
to the Ephemeral”,
interview/profile,
Indianapolis Business Journal,
Women in Business Section,
April 9-15, 2007
• * Indianapolis Monthly
Home Magazine, Profile:
“Secret Success”, July
2006
• CAA News, ...
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Collections:
Coming Soon!
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Commissions:
Artist Residency:
March-April 2008: Washington
Township School Foundation
grant commission to create
permanent wall mural painting
for children in the front
lobby of Crooked Creek
Elementary School, Marion
County, Indianapolis,
completed April 5 2008
Commissions:
"Picture Windows 2006: Urban
Interpretations" July
2006-February 2007:
“Picture Windows: Urban
Interpretations” was ...
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Artist Statement for Chitra Ramanathan
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Statement
Happiness... it lies in the joy of achievement, in the thrill of creative effort - Vincent Van Gogh
My present career as a conceptual artist emerged after I received my Bachelors degree in Painting in the 1990s. 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. 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. My usage of intense colors and variety of textural materials 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 made my foray into art (and music) at a weekend art school for children, I grew up entering competitions and earning prizes since while growing up in India. Some recollections 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. When I was 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 as mentioned above, followed by a M.B.A in Human Resources and Art Museum Administration in 1997, including a summer internship in 1996 at the New Museum of Contemporary Art, Broadway, New York.
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 abstraction, during which I have developed a significant body of work on the theme of portraying Happiness as a visual entity. A significant number of 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 predominent mediums of my originals), 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 at the Royal Academy of Arts, RA Schools London in 2005, which has since been an enormous encouragement towards sharing my work as visiting artist/adjunct professor in drawing or painting with my expanding global family of like-minded people, or to accept art commissions internationally.
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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