Creating quirky worlds full of colour and hinting at a deeper meaning, we have been following the work of Mumbai based artist, Amruta Rokade for a while now.
Her drawings and artworks seem to evoke a simpler time and are extremely expressive.
We caught up with her via email recently and got a peek into the artist behind the creations.
As a Chemical Engineering Graduate from IIT Mumbai, Amruta got tired of the 9 to 5 corporate drudgery and decided to pursue her passion creating Art. Currently she works full time as an illustrator/graphic designer. Which includes freelancing as well. She balances work and pleasure quite well, working on multiple projects simultaneously along with creating her personal artwork. Her preference is to illustrate stories, incidents and poems, literature and takes up commission works too.
Amruta draws inspiration from daily life. People acting out their lives form her characters. India’s cultural diversity and its contrasting values with the modern world form the basis of most of her works. Her art is about depicting common everyday life through the glasses of empathy. Through her art she tries to touch the forgotten feelings of compassion and kindness.
Her work tries to emphasize on the contrast that is created between modern world individualism and old family values of compassion and kinship. They tend to portray strong personal feelings through characters that connect with the viewers innately. The work has an extremely personal touch to it and is a delight to behold.
Amruta’s work is primarily created using Watercolors however she does dabble in Ink as well at time. As someone who tries to tell stories using a visual medium it’s appropriate that her inspiration is drawn more from storytellers than from artists. Inspirations are Ruskin Bond, Hayao Miyazaki, R K Narayan, Rabindranath Tagore. Artists she looks up to are Edward Degas and Rembrandt.
What’s even more impressive is that Amruta is primarily Self Taught and Educated herself by observation. Her interests include reading literature, psychology and just observing people. Her love for the rains extends itself not only into her Art Work, she’s also named her cat “Monsoon”
Her future plans include a few personal graphic novels, One of them being Yoki and the firefly: http://thoughtrelics.com/yoki/
She can be reached on:
Website: guzelinart.com
Facebook page: www.facebook.com/guzelin.art
Writing Blog: thoughtrelics.com
Email: amruta@guzelinart.com
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