Ambalika Chitkara paints quickly and instinctively, trusting colour and gesture to carry the emotion of a piece — faces that hold a weather of their own, mountains in winter light, and abstractions that begin in feeling.
The face as a vessel for the collective psyche. Painters, patrons and kindred spirits, alongside faces that belong to no museum but carry the same storms.
Landscapes caught at the moment of feeling rather than described at leisure. Bold vision, unhesitating strokes, and an atmosphere that arrives all at once — weather, altitude and silence held on the surface, beautiful before you have time to ask why.
Colour as vocabulary, composition as rhythm. Work that begins in feeling and finds its form on the surface.
Ambalika's photography turns to light, shadow and stillness. This section is being prepared; to see the work in the meantime, do write.
Enquire about photographsBeyond the works shown here, Ambalika takes on new commissions and offers archival prints of selected paintings.
Portrait commissions, from a single face to a family, and site-specific works conceived for a particular wall, home or building. Do write with the space in mind, and she will discuss scale, palette and timeline with you.
Discuss a commissionSelected works are available as giclée prints on archival paper, in limited editions, signed by the artist. Sizes and editions on request for any painting on this site.
Enquire about printsAmbalika Chitkara is a contemporary artist working across painting, sculpture and photography. Her practice is anchored in the face as both subject and metaphor, a vessel for the collective psyche and a mirror held up to the relationship between personal identity and the culture around it.
She works quickly and instinctively, trusting bold colour and gesture to carry the emotion of a piece rather than planning it in advance. Her paintings move between the abstract, the figurative and the landscape; her sculpture remains almost entirely figurative, and her photography turns to light, shadow and stillness.
She trained in oil painting under Nick Malone in London, in life drawing at Primrose Hill and Bethnal Green, and in sculpture under Saroj Jain at Triveni Kala Sangam. She holds an MBA from the Delhi School of Economics, and her years in creative advertising in India and the UK give the work its particular mix of precision and fluidity.
A mural by her is on permanent display at the National Gallery of Modern Art, New Delhi. Her work is held in private and corporate collections in India and abroad. She accepts portrait and site-specific commissions.