For an artist whose spiritual beliefs infuse the process of her painting and mixed media work, Chitra Ramanathan is very deliberate about marketing them. The results are telling; two large paintings hang in the cafe of a celebrated Las Vegas hotel, a commission that came via the internet.
“You’ve got to be in front of the public, you’ve got to show your face,” abstract painter Chitra Ramanathan says. “Otherwise how is somebody going to relate the art to the person?”
A barrier island resident, Ramanathan moved to Vero Beach from Indianapolis in 2011. The enterprising artist lost no time making herself familiar in the local art scene. Currently, her acrylic and mixed media paintings are on display at the Main Street Vero Beach (MSVB) Gallery; that show runs through Aug. 31.
Ramanathan recently exhibited a painting in the May Invitational at the Artists Guild Gallery and, until it closed its doors at the end of April, she was represented by Darby Fine Art. Ramanathan came to the attention of that gallery’s owners, Linda and George O’Malley, when she introduced herself during a First Friday Gallery Stroll in the 14th Avenue Arts District. The O’Malleys later visited the artist at home to select works for their gallery.
“I think it was one of the few galleries that encourage abstract art,” says Ramanathan. Other abstract artists at Darby included Doraté Muller and Kathy Staiger.
Where Ramanathan’s work will pop up next is anyone’s guess, although she mentioned an upcoming portfolio review at another 14th Avenue gallery.
In terms of sales, Ramanathan has had more luck online than in brick-and-mortar galleries dating back to the late 1990s, when she had success with an online gallery called Next Monet. In return for a commission on sales, the gallery promoted and sold her work. It even sent shippers to her house to pack and send paintings to their purchasers. Ramanathan was with Next Monet for several years before it went out of business. Now she relies on her pervasive web presence to bring collectors to her.
That was the case in 2006, when the Bellagio Hotel in Las Vegas called her.
Someone in the hotel’s purchasing department had seen her paintings online, and wanted to commission two 6 x 4 foot paintings for a café adjacent to the Bellagio’s flower-filled conservatory and botanical garden.
“I didn’t take it seriously,” she says of the first time the hotel contacted her. The second phone call was intercepted by Ramanathan’s college-age daughter who convinced her mother that the offer sounded legitimate. As it turned out, it was.
Before the artist started on the commission, she felt it necessary to see the space in which her paintings were destined to hang, so she and her husband took a trip to Las Vegas.
Ramanathan had never been before – gambling and casinos are not her thing, she makes clear. But the bigger-is-better style of the place did leave a favorable impression on her, in particular the Bellagio’s garden.
“It was spectacular,” she says.
Ramanathan was also struck by the frozen fireworks of a Chihuly sculptural glass installation on the ceiling of the hotel’s lobby, as well as Chihuly’s “Blue Spears,” glass stalagmites that enhance areas of the botanical garden.
After viewing the space allotted for her paintings, Ramanathan headed home and began painting.
The hotel’s guidelines for the commission were generous.
“They said do whatever you want,” Ramanathan recalls. “ And they kept their word.”
Ramanathan based her compositions on the two smaller paintings that had initially attracted the Bellagio’s attention online, and used color swatches provided by the hotel to complement the café’s decor. On completion, one of the paintings featured a large circular motif atop a variable ground of yellows and pink; the other had a composition of interlocking circles and a square against a field of mossy green.
Like Chihuly, Ramanathan has long relied on vivid color combined with simple forms for her subject matter.
Born in the Indian state of Kerala and raised in Kolkata (formerly Calcutta), Ramanathan is the eldest of three siblings. Her father was an accountant and her mother a homemaker. Ramanathan remembers her formative years with warm appreciation.
As a child, she was encouraged by her mother. “She was very ambitious for me,” Ramanathan says. She began not only to draw and paint but to enter art competitions, and became accustomed to receiving awards for her work. She took her undergraduate degree in art in India, and later studied for an additional BFA at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. By that time she was married to her husband, a medical pathologist who was then affiliated with the university’s College of Medicine.
In 1992 Ramanathan went to France on the university’s study abroad program. Part of her trip was spent at Monet’s estate, Giverny, where she painted en plein air, “capturing that fleeting moment,” she says.
As Monet had done with light on water lilies, she wanted to seize the transitory in her own art. She was at a loss, at first, about how to do it. In the nonobjective milieu of the Urbana-Champaign art department, Ramanathan had decided to trade in her representational style for abstraction, so a retread on Monet’s already over-emulated tropes was definitely out.
What quality could she celebrate in her own art?
What, she asked, is the definition of “something that you pursue all your life, but is not obtainable?”
The answer to that question was as close as her cumulative experience of her native country.
“India is a culture where there is a lot of color, a lot of festivals. Despite their circumstances, people tend to be happy, to enjoy themselves,” she says.
“But you can’t say, ‘I’m happy’ and that’s it. There’s a cycle. Hinduism itself – and I’m a Hindu – is based on life, and death is just the beginning of a new life,” she adds.
The cyclical nature of life, its ups and downs, and the individual’s decision to make the best of today and look forward to tomorrow underpins her personal viewpoint in art as well as life.
“I allow change to come into the work, I don’t control it. Once I start controlling – I guess every artist will say this – if you feel that something is so contrived, so cautious, the results show,” she says.
It is a remarkably hands-off philosophy for a hands-on technique like painting.
Ramanathan says that she has thrown away many paintings that did not ultimately meet with her approval; when that happens, she attributes the painting’s shortcomings more to the painting itself than to the hand that created it.
“Sometimes something doesn’t speak to you. Something in there doesn’t want you to continue on that same path,” she says.
For now, Ramanathan’s path is set on painting and finding a new local venue for her work. She also intends to continue to attend Vero’s First Friday Gallery Strolls, where, she says, she has “met everybody.”