Indrajeet Chandrachud is a New York City based artist and designer. For the past two decades, Indrajeet has led a life focused on the visual arts—as an artist, a creative director, a surface pattern designer and a game designer.

Indrajeet’s paintings are based on architecture he has encountered in his travels within the USA, and to Latin America, Europe and India. Indrajeet’s minimal approach to art can be best explained by the following quote by French writer and poet, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. “Perfection is achieved not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away”.

With this minimal approach to cubist architectural landscapes, Indrajeet creates surreal, brightly coloured spaces within the canvas. His roots in eastern philosophies and cultures have increased his desire to communicate emotion with the use of form and colour. His work is generally quiet, orderly and meditative in its finished form and allows the viewers to place themselves in a painting and be lost in it. The purpose of his paintings is not to reproduce the likeness of an architectural form, but the emotion one feels from it. Indrajeet has shown his work in group as well as solo shows on both sides of the Atlantic.

Indrajeet in his own words:

Major themes & subjects
Whether you want to call it a theme or a subject, architecture remains by far my biggest subject. I have been painting a series with humans, but it is still relative to the architecture around it. We remember places either by events of people we experience or the architecture we encounter. I prefer to focus on the later. Sometimes, even humanizing the architecture, hopefully drawing emotion from cold, concrete with colour.

How it all started
I was never interested in painting. I didn’t seek it out. It found me. Once while cleaning my home, I found a box of very expensive paint. I couldn’t bring myself to throw it away. So I decided to paint with it. I liked the results, so I didn’t stop. 20 years later, I’m still at it. I prefer acrylics as it drying time is quicker and my style of painting requires a quick drying medium. However, I have been experimenting with different media, including collage.

Style and practice over the years
I am a classically trained graphic designer, and my paintings have a very graphic quality to it. It’s true what they say—you seldom wander too far from your roots. There is so much stress on self-expression in painting, that it almost becomes autobiographical. I started painting because it made me happy. I never thought of myself as an artist. During this period I started making large paintings and architecture in a very simple graphic style. As the years passed, I turned more towards deconstruction, abstraction and cubism. Architecture as a subject lends itself well to cubism. I look forward to see how this changes over the years.

The process
All my paintings begin as doodles. I also work in advertising, which is filled with long, boring meetings and you have to let your mind wander to stay sane. I usually start doodling and these doodles then turn into sketches. Once I am happy with a shape, I begin to imagine the colour, colour is the most important part of my paintings. My colours are never mixed on the palette, rather applied in several layers to form an effective colour giving it a distressed look. These paintings usually take between 2-3 weeks to complete.

Best advice ever received
“Paint for yourself, paint what you like! Paint like no one will ever see your work. Don’t worry about what anyone else will think, or if anyone will ever buy your work. Only then can you truly paint your heart out.”

Paint with music, or silence?
Because the subject of my art is mostly imagined placed and placed that have been warped in my mind, I prefer meditative silence. As I paint, I like to imagine what would be happening in this world on canvas if it were a real place. Who would walk down the street? Would two lovers meet over there in the corner.

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Education

• 2000 Syracuse University. Syracuse, New York. Master of Fine Arts

• 1997 Directorate of Art. Mumbai, India. Bachelor of Fine Arts

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 Exhibitions 

• 2019 Solo Show: Embracing Colour. Arundel Contemporary, Arundel, West Sussex, UK

• 2018 Curated Group Show: Creature. The Gallery @ The Factory, New York City, USA

• 2018 Curated Group Show: Five Napkin Show. The Gallery @ The Factory, New York City, USA

• 2018 Curated Group Show: Escape Velocity. Plaxall Gallery, New York City, USA

• 2017 Curated Group Show: Winter Sculptures. Plaxall Gallery, New York City, USA

• 2017 Curated Group Show: Live, Work, Play. The Gallery @ The Factory, New York City, USA

• 2017 Curated Group Show: Annual Fall Salon. Plaxall Gallery, New York City, USA

• 2017 Curated Group Show: Fear. Plaxall Gallery, New York City, USA

• 2017 Juried Group Show: Making Connections. Citi De Ford Gallery, New York City, USA

• 2017 Curated Group Show: The Garden of Earthly Delights. Plaxall Gallery, New York City, USA

• 2017 Curated Group Show: Beach Elements. Plaxall Gallery, New York City, USA

• 2017 Curated Group Show: Space C. LIC Arts Open Festival. New York City, USA

• 2017 Curated Group Show Walk With Light. Plaxall Gallery, New York City, USA

• 2017 Curated Group Show 8 Loves. Plaxall Gallery. New York City, USA

• 2017 Works on Paper. Curated Group Show. Arundel Contemporary, West Sussex, UK

• 2014 Movin' On. Solo Show. Arundel Contemporary Arundel, West Sussex, UK

• 2013 Summertime Medley. Curated Group Show. Arundel Contemporary, West Sussex, UK

• 2013 Places I Remember. Solo Show. Arundel Contemporary, Arundel, West Sussex, UK

• 2012 Long Island City Arts Open. New York City, USA

• 2012 Group Show. Long Island City Artist Showcase. Eleven 11, New York City, USA

• 2012 Group Show. Architectural Colour , Modern Spaces. New York City, USA

• 2012 Solo Show. Dreamscapes, Colorida Art Gallery, Lisbon Portugal

• 2012 TOAST Art Walk, TriBeca Open Artist Studio Tour, New York City, USA

• 2012 Project 10x10, Juried Group Show. New York City, USA

• 2012 Group Show. Vive le Surrealisme! Arundel Contemporary, UK

• 2012 Urban Dreamscape. Solo Show. The Secret Theatre Gallery, New York City, USA

• 2011 Art Paris 2011, Paris Expo (Group show through the Saatchi Gallery), Paris, France

• 2011 Finalist, Juried Group Show, Richeson 75 Landscape. Kimberly, Wisconsin, USA

• 2010 Nourish Gallery, New York City, USA

• 2009 American Cancer Society. Pink & Black Tie Gala, New York City, USA

• 2009 American Cancer Society. Eat Drink and Be Hopeful Gala, New York City, USA