Published: Dec 27, 2021 07:00 AM
“Let’s leave the world a brighter place than we found it.”
That brief statement introduces the showcase of completed artwork created by Newtown resident Aakriti Aggarwal on her otherwise uncluttered Instagram site. But it also sums up the spirit and inspiration that leads her, often late at night when her Botsford home is dark and quiet, to a basement studio where Aggarwal mixes and splashes brilliant swaths of color onto canvas.
Aggarwal, who recently relocated to Newtown, followed her husband Chirag Adhia to the US from India in 2017, but she told The Newtown Bee during a mid-fall interview, that she has been drawing since childhood. And that was not her only creative outlet.
“As a child, if there was not enough money to get art supplies, I turned to poetry,” she said. Aggarwal continues to pursue that activity along with a love for completing massive puzzles.
Sweeping her hand toward a shelving unit and kitchen table in the couple’s condominium reveals several puzzle boxes and one ambitious work in progress that includes more than 1,000 pieces.
Recounting her artistic journey from childhood to today, Aggarwal noted that when she was younger, she was expert at recreating scenes and subjects with precise definition, very close to photographic reproductions.
But as she grew through her teens and into her 20s, Aggarwal’s artistic wherewithal changed and matured along with her knowledge of more worldly affairs — some that had great influence on the more abstract, less structured, and more colorful work she is now creating.
“I don’t sketch, and only a few of my paintings have actual hard lines or borders,” she said. “Most of the time I just mix and work with broad strokes of color.”
As some of her earliest creations got noticed by others, one friend asked if Aggarwal could reproduce her child’s name using cartoon characters from the Pixar motion picture Cars. In short order, the work was completed much to the delight of her friend and her friend’s son, the recipient.
“That was probably the most defined painting I ever did, because the characters had to be reproduced exactly from the movie,” Aggarwal said.
Another commission came from family friends who were expecting their second child.
“They didn’t really give me any direction, just asked for something they could hang in the baby’s room,” the artist recalled. The finished product, an abstract image of two parents with their toddler all holding an infant, was graciously accepted.
Another painting, created as a gift to her husband, depicts two cute owls cuddling together. Aggarwal also uses nature and natural settings in other works, including two very different images using trees as the primary or sole subjects.
A trained mental health counselor in her native India, Aggarwal decided once she came to the US that a lack of cultural knowledge might hinder her ability to transition her skill set stateside. So she headed to Sacred Heart University and earned a Masters in Human Resource Management.
After a brief period working for an HR software development company that spun her into an unwanted sales role, she is now poised to begin working for a Greenwich firm in the new year.
But she does not foresee her new job as being any reason for shelving her art supplies.
Aggarwal said as she considers accepting other limited commissions in the months and years to come, she is thinking of including a caveat that the client permit her own interpretive talents to emerge through the creative process. That practice in producing her own work has been ultimately successful so far.
At the same time, as mentioned, she also is occasionally moved to work out frustrations or emotional reactions to current events on canvas. One such piece emerged following the March 2021 shootings in metropolitan Atlanta, Ga., where eight people were killed, six of whom were Asian women.
Aggarwal was so upset after learning the 21-year-old perpetrator had targeted the Asian women specifically, that the only thing she could do was let her emotions pour out in the vivid color schemes that emerged from her palette and brushes.
One of her latest, and Aggarwal’s self-proclaimed favorite, is a foursome of women in profile, all facing to the right atop an escalating fence and a contrasting round earthly globe.
Anyone who might consider acquiring one of Aggarwal’s remaining existing pieces, or who would like to discuss a concept or commissioned work, can access and message her through her Facebook page.
Newtown resident, HR professional, and artist Aakriti Aggarwal holds up one of her pieces in her home studio in Botsford. The transplant from India almost exclusively uses brushes and color to create brilliant images that most often take their inspiration from nature and natural scenes, although a more recent work picturing a foursome of women profiles is her current favorite. —Bee Photos, Voket
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When the urge to get creative does not inspire her to paint, Newtown resident and artist Aakriti Aggarwal says she will tackle a huge 1,000 piece (or larger) puzzle. —Bee Photo, Voket
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Local Artist Making Her Mark In Vibrant Color - The Newtown Bee
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