Keerthana S Kumar
Keerthana grew up in a family of engineers and doctors. She graduated from top schools and earned her undergraduate degree in engineering and a postgraduate degree in business. Despite this very academic background, she discovered her artistic journey during her days in business consulting. Keerthana is now a contemporary figurative painter living and working in Bangalore, India.
Pop culture, fauvism, and symbolism inspire her work. She uses pure, brilliant colors gently applied in layers straight from the paint tubes to create a sense of an explosion on the canvas. Her art evolved from experiences of color biases and gender prejudices that affected her self-perception. As a woman of color, she faced issues because of being dark-skinned within her racial and ethnic groups. Gender role expectations seemed irrational, and she felt they were only an impediment to free will. Brought up in Chennai, a conservative city in India, she did not see any representations of herself in media, social life, or within the family who had turned big dreams into reality. Due to her unconventional mindset, she questioned the conditioning, urging herself to make a difference in her world. Only in her early twenties did her world open, and she started seeing her role models, who are now playing a part in her painting inspirations.
Keerthana uses acrylic mediums and knife painting techniques in her body of work. Over the last year, she has exhibited at art fairs and exhibitions in India and the UAE.
Artist Statement
I have been exploring vibrant, bold woman portraits in modern-day art forms. The interest developed as a way for me to liberate myself, unlearn how I was raised to value myself, and define empowerment for myself. Our society still has a colorism problem. Sexist myths do not die either. As a woman of color, I went from victimization to thriving through my art practice. While I'm painting on a blank canvas, I always consider that the paintings I create should empower observers and encourage them to believe that beauty and power can be found in oneself and not determined by others.
My art is a representation of feminine identity, living an exquisite dream. In my body of work, there are layers of colors giving a textured finish to my main subjects, symbolizing uncommon, surreal, and soulful feminine beauty inside out. I use bright, bold, and saturated colors that pop instead of skin tones to reflect personality rather than physical appearance. My creative process begins with identifying the right choices of vibrant colors on the subject (woman) and patterns. I use palette knife techniques on the subject and flat brushstrokes elsewhere to get the perfect color block.
I enjoy watching shapes, forms, and lines in repetition. There is something about the arrangement that intrigues me. I use patterns in the background as well as in the foreground adorning my subjects’ clothes, objects, or even floors. It creates a rhythm and gives the composition a feeling of movement, directing observers to a focal point in the painting. Amongst all, checkered patterns are my go-to. According to me, the light and dark of the checkered pattern symbolically represent highs and lows, ebbs and flows, positive and negative, etc., and that’s the beauty of reality and life.
www.keerthanaskumarart.com
