Chitra Ramanathan is a contemporary visual artist and art educator. Her distinguished, predominantly large-scale abstract conceptual mixed media and acrylic paintings are in corporate and private collections as acquisitions, and featured as site-specific public art installations including murals. Her paintings arrived on the art scene in 1995 when various art galleries on Broadway, New York City invited the artist to exhibit in solo and group exhibitions. Her work was noticed by art critics including Manhattan Arts that praised the works’ unique style and rendering of colors true to Chitra Ramanathan’s roots as a child artist while growing up in India. Featured in solo and group exhibitions since 1995 beginning with a solo show at the ARC Gallery, Chicago in 1994, her numerous originals have been acquired by individual and business sources including corporate commissions.
Education and milestones:
The professional contemporary artist earned her Bachelors of Fine Arts degree majoring in Painting with honors in 1993, and her M.B.A degree ( interview link) with concentrations in Art Museum Administration and Human Resources in 1997 both from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA. During her student years, she spent an extensive period of time studying art in Paris, France. The experience paved the way for her future abstract paintings that compare the emotion of happiness expressed as cyclical and fleeting to ephemeral garden blooms. Combined with an Expressionistic style, the concept is influenced by the Impressionist Movement, particularly Claude Monet’s paintings which make Chitra Ramanathan’s work unique.
Working processes:
Chitra Ramanathan’s ongoing goal and dialogue with her audiences is achieved through treating her canvases to fresh bright colors and intricately interwoven texture materials which are executed with rapid brush strokes. Combining intense colors with layers of varied textural materials often incorporated into the paint, each of the artist's unique originals interact with light to visually and physically extend the boundaries of the two-dimensional surface. Intensely colorful, yet ephemeral garden blooms and changing seasons inspire the artist to visually portray happiness, comparing both as being fleeting and cyclical. The hint of circles almost always present in her paintings signify the cycle of nature.
The artist's working process evolves continually with each developing work being infused with cutting edge art materials. The luminous surfaces are treated with primarily acrylic mediums or mixed media, often dense with collaged imagery and cutting-edge techniques learned through educational avenues such as professional art conventions. Her experience serving as committee member (Committee for Diversity Practices, 2007-2010 and Services to Artists, 2003-2006) of the College Arts Association, New York, and professional artist residencies at organizations at the Camac Centre' d Art at Marnay sur Seine, France and the Scuola Internazionale di Grafica at Venice, Italy in recent years have been compelling factors.
Chitra Ramanathan has taught college level courses and workshops in abstract, mixed media and acrylic painting since 2004 as art faculty at the Indianapolis Art Center, Indiana and the Art School of the Vero Beach Museum of Art, Florida, accepting periodic visiting artist invitations such as at the Painting Area, Kansas State University. In 2005 she was invited as Visitor Artist with renumeration and British permit by the Keeper of the Royal Academy of Arts, London U.K where she conducted a visual presentation of her body of work, artist talk and student critics at the RA Schools.
Recent private commissions include a three paneled painting, or triptych created for the CEO of Biaggis Restaurant, Bloomington, Illinois in 2016 and large painting created for a private client in Boston, MA completed in February 2018.