Uma Ramakrishnan
Completed Applied Art
from Sophia Polytechnic, Mumbai,
Inspired by her colleague Anil Powle,
started painting in the year 1998
ABOUT UMA – Written by Jaishree – 04/03/13
“The aim of art is to represent not the outward appearance of things, but their inward significance.”
– Aristotle
Graphic artist and a sensitive painter, Uma studied Applied Art at Sophia College Polytechnic in Mumbai. Formal education only provides an understanding of medium and technique. The rest is left to the artist to explore and discover, which is just what Uma did. In 1998, she started painting seriously, slowly moving from being a Sunday painter to a more focused artist, inspired by everything around her even her dreams.
Uma started painting as a means of self-expression, making the transition overnight, from applied art to fine art. Painting slowly developed into a regular feature in her life and soon she was doing still life, investing in canvas and oil colors, blissfully happy, as canvasses started to pile up. They became answers to problems at work, life and on the personal front.
Uma’s doodles, sketches and paintings are about her experiences in life. Some of her subjects are elements of nature, the sea, relationships like parent and child, the human figure, self-portraits. She started as a realist, expressionist painter. Slowly, her style became more and more surreal, her subject became philosophical and spiritual. Paintings that followed showed war, the human soul; canvasses became larger.
As an experiment, she even got a couple of child dancers, perform classical dance on canvass with their feet soaked in paint. The figures that seemed to be dancing and disappearing looked liked illusions that were visible for a moment, disappearing in the next. Her paintings hold different interpretations for every viewer and many have identified themselves in her art. She awakens the subconscious of the viewer of her art. Though personal and deep, Uma’s paintings ‘speak’ to the viewer, thus crossing the line from personal to universal.
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BIO Data
Date of Birth : Dec. 1955
Educational Qualifications :Completed Commercial Art from Sophia College Polytechnic in Mumbai in the year 1978. Course duration 5 years
Experience :
Background – Worked in the Advertising field from the age of 24. Worked at various places until I partnered with a friend to form Origin Ad Ventures in the year 1987 – a partnership firm which evolved into Origin Hak Communications Pvt. Ltd. where I am a share holding Director.
I was always interested in painting & wrote poetry & created Poster Poems long before I started painting. Even as a child I used to send out drawings to the Illustrated Weekly of India for competitions. I started painting seriously in the year 1998.
Exhibitions – In the year 2006, we put up the first group show of 3 Artists including myself at Malad in Orlem. The exhibition titled “INNERVISION” was inaugurated by Bharat Dhabholkar – the Theatre, Ad-Man & Film personality.
I exhibited again with my colleagues in March 2013 at the Wine Festival – Monsoon Winds, at Ramada Inn, Powai, where three of us created a “paintings wall” in the lawn.
We also participated in the Bandra Wine Festival – Monsoon Winds, in November 2013 in the Art Section.
In November 2014 I exhibited at India Art Festival at Nehru Centre in Mumbai in a group show of 3 artists who are my colleagues.
In the year March 2015, I conducted an art workshop for the Anjuman-i-Islam’s Saif Tyabji Girls High School for students of the English Access Micro Scholarship Programme (of the American Consulate)
Mobile :9322874106
Email :auma55@rediffmail.com
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