Introducing Chitra Merchant
A vey warm welcome to Bristol based painter and print-maker, Chitra Merchant. We’re delighted to be showing a collection of Chitra’s screenprints and acrylics in December this year, some of which will feature in our Works Under £500 show. Inspired by India’s secret groves, Chitra’s work bursts with impact, both vibrant and tranquil at the same time.
Migration 1 - Portrait of Sundari, Screenprint on Paper, Edition of 25
Chitra Parvathy Merchant currently works as an artist in Bristol. After completing a BA Degree in Psychology, she left India to work for a year in an artist’s studio in West Africa. She came to England in the early nineties and completed a BA (Hons) Degree in Illustration from UWE Bristol, where she was first introduced to printmaking. In 2001 she based herself at Spike Print Studio where she prints, paints, exhibits and works to commission on a regular basis.
Chitra has been engaged with exploring the forest ecologies of the Western Ghats in South India for several years now. 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 resulting drawings, paintings and prints seek to explore and highlight the biodiversity as well the inherent wild mystery underlying the existence of these spaces.
Chitra also hopes to shed light on the many environmental issues and threats facing this fast-diminishing landscape. She is actively involved with the Save Soil, a global movement to address the soil crisis by uniting people across the globe to stand up for soil health.
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 or drawn into landscapes that traverse from the known into the mythical, into a “Region beyond Reason”
2025 RWA Autumn exhibition
2023 Royal West of England Autumn show
2023 Royal Academy Summer Exhibition
2022 Harford Prize from the Royal West of England Academy
2022 Royal West of England Summer Show
2021 Royal Academy Summer Exhibition
Keeping Vigil III, Acrylic on Canvas, 40 × 40cm
