Avani Patel

Biography

Born in Mumbai 1976, India, Avani Patel was immigrated to Pennsylvania with her family at 11 years old. She holds a BA from the Penn State University and an MFA from Tyler School of Arts (Temple University). Her cultural background has had a profound impact on the forging of her identity as an artist. As a young girl living in India, she fell in love with the patterns of dresses, exotic colors, the sound of music, as well as the spectacle of both theatre and cinema. They were all fluidly interconnected, effectively symbolizing the rhythm of daily life. Indian culture is the starting point of her work. The range of Indian culture expressed through film, theatre, music, and performance are all sources of artistic inspiration for her. Even though from far away from home, she continue to explore the boundaries between Eastern and Western cultural influences. Her paintings have been exhibited in New York, Providence, Philadelphia, New Jersey, Ohio, Virginia, Chicago, Dubai, Panama, Portugal, and Mexico. She was invited in 2005 by the American Embassy in Panama to hold workshops in schools and art centers, creating collaborative art installations about everyday objects in my personal life. Collin Powell and Laura Bush invited her to honor American artists at the Art in Embassies in 2005, alongside 50 other artists and gallerists. She worked on the public project America’s Chinatown Voices at Columbus Park in New York City, organized by the Asian American Art Center in 2008 and 2009. Three hundred panels illustrating stories of Asian Americans in New York were publicly displayed in Chinatown New York City. The Philadelphia Museum of Art proudly exhibited two of her paintings from 2002 to 2008. She has done residency with Snug Harbor Cultural Center, Chashama Visual Arts, and Triangle Workshop.

Artist statement

Art has been an integral part of my life since I was a young girl. I used to go to the theater with my sister for rehearsals and her dance shows. Looking at all the colorful costumes, flowing dresses, and festivity around, I felt that the colors are speaking to me. It made me joyful and painting became entertainment for me. A few youthful years of entertainment helped me tap into the power of art. It enabled me to live life with rich joy and full of creativity. After all these years, I have found that nothing brings me more joy and happiness than expressing my imagination through art.

The rich colorful culture of India, music, and various forms of nature have always inspired and influenced me in carving my imagination onto a canvas. I travel to different parts of the world to connect myself to the endless source of ideas coupled with their culture and its surroundings of the natural environment. I capture those moments and imaginations to revive them into creative images.

I draw and paint from things I see in nature and everyday surrounding of personal experiences, narratives, and memories. I use mark-making and repetition as tools to signify a change in nature, the passage of time, and the retention and rejection of memory.

What I like the most is the way I would demonstrate or would draw along with time, such as a study of my drawings of nature which will take me a few months to create and that helps me understand my colors and pattern. What is working and which element of nature I can transfer to my big-size paintings? I'm a visual learner so this helps me personally, and also as an artist. Doing this helped not only improve my personal skills but it gave me more credibility to me as an artist.