Kavita Aras Rajput

Kavita Rajput was born and raised in Mumbai, India. She started her journey as a watercolour artist by taking adult education lessons after work at the New York Academy of Art in Manhattan in 2010. She continued her training under watercolour artist Michiyo Fukushima, both at NYAA and at Fukushima's TriBeCa studio until she moved to Singapore in 2012.

Moving to Singapore started a new journey in self-learning and discovering her own art identity. Kavita had her first solo exhibition, 'Moments in Watercolour' at the ION Art Gallery in March 2015. The exhibited works depicted life in big cities, images we pass by everyday without notice, as we rush through our lives. 'Moments in Watercolour' attempted to make the viewer take a pause to notice the ordinary and even if just for one moment, find beauty in the everyday.

In the year 2015, Kavita completed a formidable personal challenge of creating 365 small watercolour artworks in one year, one for each day. The 365 works moved across a range of subjects from landscapes to spiritual to fantasy, reflecting Kavita's moods and musings as she went through the year. For Kavita, the k-art365 journey was a journey of the spirit - of perseverance, discipline and commitment, but above it all, of acceptance and self-love. All the 365 works were exhibited in her second solo exhibition, 'k-art365 by kavita rajput' held at The Right Side at Loewen Gardens in September 2016.

Artist Statement

I find beauty in the chaos of big cities - in the colourful collage created by a crowd, in the dance of clouds reflected on glass windows of sky-scrapers, in the angles and shadows of a circular staircase or the ornate tiles of an old shophouse. Big cities, with their diversity - of both people and architecture, make me feel at home. And this beauty is what I aim to capture through my work. My art usually begins with my camera. I find and record everything that catches my eye in the world around me. Sifting through these images and combining elements from a few of them is as much a part of my art process, as the actual act of drawing and painting.

I believe I have a special relationship with watercolour, my medium of choice. The true spirit of water is to flow freely - to resist being controlled. The more one tries to control it, the more it rebels and forms paths, patterns and designs of it's own accord. My paintings are created by adding layer upon layer of transparent watercolour till I get the effect I desire. The gentle urging required to guide water to move the way I would like, makes the process of creating an artwork as spiritual for me as it is physical.

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