In this Episode of Art is Awesome, Host Emily Wilson spends time with Berkeley based painter Amrita Singhal.
Welcome to Art is Awesome, the show where we talk with an artist or art worker with a connection to the San Francisco Bay Area.
Today, Emily chats with painter Amrita Singhal, known for her vibrant oil paintings and the Rama Prayer mural in Berkeley. Amrita discusses her background, growing up in a culturally rich city in India, and how her former career as a tax lawyer enriched her artistic practice. After leaving law due to health issues, Amrita pursued painting, finding her voice in oil paints. Her work often explores themes of spirituality, with influences from Giotto and Matisse, and she creates immersive virtual reality experiences based on spiritual practices. Amrita also shares her inspirations and favorite places in the Bay Area.
About Artist Amrita Singal:
Amrita Singhal is based in Berkeley, California. She had the good fortune to study drawing and art history with the brilliant and reclusive painter Louise Smith who was a contemporary of the Bay Area Abstract Expressionists (Diebenkorn, Park, Bischoff et al.) and a one time student of Hans Hoffman, Erle Loran and Margaret Peterson O’Hagan. Two of Amrita’s paintings are in the permanent collection of the UC Berkeley Art Museum (BAM). She has painted a Berkeley Public Works Art mural for Meyer Sound and regularly exhibits her work in solo and juried group shows. Amrita is currently producing one of her painting series in virtual reality and as an immersive exhibit.
Visit Amrita's Website: AmritaSinghal.com
Follow on Instagram: @AmritaSinghalStudio
CLICK HERE to check out the Rama Mural in Berkeley.
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About Podcast Host Emily Wilson:
Emily a writer in San Francisco, with work in outlets including Hyperallergic, Artforum, 48 Hills, the Daily Beast, California Magazine, Latino USA, and Women’s Media Center. She often writes about the arts. For years, she taught adults getting their high school diplomas at City College of San Francisco.
Follow Emily on Instagram: @PureEWil
Follow Art Is Awesome on Instagram: @ArtIsAwesome_Podcast
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CREDITS:
Art Is Awesome is Hosted, Created & Executive Produced by Emily Wilson.
Theme Music "Loopster" Courtesy of Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License
The Podcast is Co-Produced, Developed & Edited by Charlene Goto of @GoToProductions.
For more info, visit Go-ToProductions.com
2024-1008 - AIA - EP035 - Amrita Singhal
Host Emily Wilson: [00:00:00] Art is Awesome can now be heard on KSFP 102. 5 FM every Friday at 9 a. m. and 7 p. m. Please follow the show and rate us wherever you get your podcast media. If you like what you hear from today's artist, you can find links and information about them in our show notes.
Artist Amrita Singal: I can work on a painting for five, six, seven years, and I won't feel like it's there yet. I might need more skills or different perspective, or I try different colors, different layers, different textures.
Host Emily Wilson: That's painter Amrita Singhal, the guest on today's Art is Awesome.
I'm your host, Emily Wilson. I'm a writer in San Francisco, often covering the arts, and I've been meeting such great people [00:01:00] that I created this biweekly podcast to highlight their work. I first saw Amrita Singhal's work in a gallery in Berkeley. Along with her colorful, dreamy oil paintings, the show included the virtual reality piece she's working on of the Rama Prayer.
This is a spiritual practice Amrita's grandmother did, writing the name of the Hindu deity Rama over and over. Amrita also has a mural for the city of Berkeley of the Rama Prayer. It's on the Meyer Sound building on Heinz Avenue. Her work is in the UC Berkeley Art Museum, and recently she had a show at Manny's in San Francisco.
I met Amrita at her Berkeley studio, full of her art and books about art. She loves Giotto's Tenderness and the Colors of Matisse, and you can see that influence in her work. We talked about how her profession [00:02:00] as a tax lawyer made her a better artist listening to everything from Indian music to Leonard Cohen to electronic music while she paints and being surrounded by art as a child.
Artist Amrita Singal: I grew up in a city in India that was then called Allahabad and it was a Hindu household. I went to Catholic schools in very sort of beautiful colonial buildings and this whole city was established by the Mughals. So, there was a lot of Islamic influence and it was sort of like a crossroads of incredible art and culture and music and very literary.
So it was a wonderful place to grow up.
Host Emily Wilson: She had more than visual art around her.
Artist Amrita Singal: My great grandfather had a library of 10, 000 books in different languages ranging from Shakespeare to Ghalib, who was an 18th century, [00:03:00] 19th century Sufi poet, to the Vedas and the Ramayana. I was named after Amrita Shergill, who was a poet, an Indian poet.
Even though I didn't go to international museums or anything, but there was so much art around the house, and we were constantly making things. We were putting on plays, there was just a lot going on, music classes. Art classes, things like that.
Host Emily Wilson: Amrita worked as a tax lawyer for 15 years. She thinks it made her a better artist.
Artist Amrita Singal: Being a lawyer really allows me to, first of all, to outwork, just to work a lot. Like there's no limit to the number of hours that I can put in. And also, I do tend to do a lot of research. And I mean, if something interests me, materials interest me, or. Ideas, or painters, [00:04:00] musicians, I just do a lot of research into the backgrounds of how something is created, like what are the ideas around it, what are the : techniques.
Host Emily Wilson Eventually, Amrita left her law career. To paint.
Artist Amrita Singal: I had some health issues and, I was raising my children and my husband at one point said, well, you either have to leave the kids and me or your law practice and you take care of your health. And so I, I did leave law for a while and it was a struggle because I was used to earning a living and having gone to school for so long and it was just something that was.
I expected of myself and societal expectations, but I have to say, I give my husband a lot of credit here for really supporting me in every [00:05:00] possible way. And he himself is a very, very accomplished pianist. And, um, uh, Really understands the need to create. So I think I was very lucky in that my community and support system just allowed me to do that.
Also, I saw my mother who was actually a software engineer, but she was an incredible painter. Like some, something kicked in and like I just had to paint.
Host Emily Wilson: Amrita took printmaking classes at Kala Art Institute in Berkeley. She loved them. Then another artist gave her some materials they were getting rid of.
Artist Amrita Singal: I just started to work with oil paints and very quickly, almost immediately realized that this was going to be a lifelong love affair and that I had to commit to it immediately and in a very big way. Amrita needed a place to work. [00:06:00] I came upon the studio in 2013. And that's when I just felt like I was liberated.
This is truly a room of one's own because I'm telling, I come in here and I just, I can work on a painting for five, six, seven years because, and I won't feel like it's there yet. I might need more skills or a fresh or different perspective or I try. It's different colors, different layers, different textures.
This is a painting, for example, that probably took 12 years to arrive. It's based on Giotto's Saint Francis and the Birds, which is my favorite painting.
Host Emily Wilson: Amrita did a mural on the Meyer Sound Building in Berkeley.
Artist Amrita Singal: I have a series called the Ram Prayer Series, which is based on an old Indian meditation practice. It's a written meditation with just the word Rama. And my grandmother actually used to write this in a [00:07:00] very abstracted way. When I was a child, I would watch her do this.
Host Emily Wilson: Amrita is currently working with a team on a version in virtual reality. She says she wants to bathe viewers inside light and color and transport them to an immersive environment.
Artist Amrita Singal: My goal is to really do it for public consumption. It's not to be monetized. It's a spiritual practice and I But it's not, I mean, it has universal appeal. So I want it to be out there for public institutions, as well as for mental health.
Host Emily Wilson: She plays all kinds of music while she paints.
Artist Amrita Singal: I listen to a lot of Indian music, old Indian music, which has lyrics because they are, the lyrics are like poetry and it really evokes, it keeps me close to the language.
I'm a fluent Hindi speaker. I like that poetic language. I listened to a lot of music from Africa. I listen to a lot of Leonard [00:08:00] Cohen. I listen to electronic music. I mean, honestly, I listen to 70s, 60s, a lot of Bob Dylan.
Host Emily Wilson: Amrita wants people to feel something when they see her art.
Artist Amrita Singal: I just had a show at the UC Berkeley Faculty Club.
It was a small show that revolved around smaller paintings around the theme of home. And it was the feeling of home. The way the apple tree that I might have been thinking about because the kids played under it after school when they were In preschool. So they would come home and it was okay. What do we do now for the next, you know, six hours?
And so, so we would be under the tree a lot. And just that feeling of home that that evokes or playing around. I have a native garden and a fountain and so playing [00:09:00] around the fountain and the birds and my dog, my beloved dog who just passed away. So I did a painting of him which is surrounded with this beautiful Matisse pink.
Having a cup of tea. What does that feel like? So I took an image from an old Persian miniature and there's someone making tea. And so there's. That's sort of my interpretation of that, which is what I feel like when I have a cup of afternoon tea, which is very important to me.
Host Emily Wilson: This is the part of the show, three questions, where I asked the artists the same three questions. When did you know you were an artist? What's some work that has had an impact on you? And what's the most creatively inspiring place in the Bay Area?
Artist Amrita Singal: I cannot answer that question. I have a need to paint. [00:10:00] I have an intense need to paint. And maybe that is how I relate to being an artist.
Works that really influence me are, I love Giotto. I love Matisse. Uh, I mean, but you know, it's just art history for me is I, I love art history because I feel like I found my people and it is enough, it's such a wonderful road to walk down and it's infinite.
I love Tilden Park. I love my garden and really the Bay Area is so full of nature. And I love the Legion of Honor because I just love wandering through, looking at different colors and [00:11:00] paintings and mediums and going to their cafe, love the cafe and the setting you, you go in, you emerge, the ocean is there.
Just the wonder and the beauty of, of its setting. And then I love the marble. So I find all that very inspiring because it takes me to, it does what a museum should do. Like it kind of transports you. So I love that. I love being transported.
Host Emily Wilson: Thank you for listening to Art is Awesome. And thank you so much to the guest, painter Amrita Singhal. You can see her mural of the Ram Prayer on Heinz Avenue in Berkeley. Please follow the show and join us two Tuesdays from now when the guest will be photographer Chloe Sherman. Her show Renegades, documenting queer life and community in San Francisco in the nineties is at the Leica [00:12:00] store on Bush Street in downtown San Francisco.
Art is Awesome is a bi weekly podcast coming out every other Tuesday. It's created and hosted by me. Emily Wilson. It is produced and edited by Charlene Gotu of Gotu Productions. It's carried on KSFP LP 102. 5 FM San Francisco on Fridays at 9 a. m. and 7 p. m. Our theme music is provided by Kevin MacLeod with Incompetech Music.
Be sure and follow us on Instagram at artisawesomepodcast or visit our website. Till next [00:13:00]time.