Chitra Merchant
Chitra Merchant’s drawings, paintings and prints seek to explore and highlight the biodiversity as well the inherent wild mystery underlying the existence of these spaces. She sheds light on the issue of soil degradation and various other environmental threats facing this fast diminishing landscape.
Merchant’s work frequently draws upon her Indian upbringing. This is reflected in her use of colour as metaphor, as a feeling for a particular colour often forms the starting point of her work. Her landscapes use ancient Indian historical sites as a starting point from which to root and develop imaginary structures that take on a life and logic of their own.
Merchant has been engaged with exploring the forest ecologies of the Western Ghats in South Indian.
Having grown up in this region, she travels back regularly and has a long-standing connection to it, passed down from her grandfather, who was a forest officer in these parts. She is particularly inspired by the ‘Devakads’ (Sacred Groves) found in these regions and the stories and mythologies that surround them. The trees in these artworks are very much rooted in observational drawings of ancient existing species, keeping in mind their particular values to the local population in terms of their medicinal, spiritual and symbolic aspects. With this base, the trees are placed/drawn into landscapes that traverse from the known into the mythical, into a “Region beyond Reason”.
SELECTED EXHIBITIONS:
Upcoming show at Candida Stevens Fine Art, Sussex 2021 | Royal Academy Summer / Winter Show , London 2020 | Solo show at Hidden Gallery, Bristol 2019 | Summer Exhibition, Royal Academy, London 2018 | Art Rooms Fair 2018 | ‘Good Nature’, Candida Stevens Fine Art, Chichester, UK 2017
EDUCATION:
BA (Hons) Degree Illustration from U.W.E Bristol 1998
Chitra Merchant lives and works Bristol.
“ I always start with drawings from which I create a stencil. These are then translated into a screenprint, where I enjoy layering colour, tone, line and text into each piece. I also like to turn techniques on their heads to see what treasure or disaster might be revealed.”
Interview:
