Biography

Suchi Chidambaram

Born in Trichy in 1975, Suchi Chidambaram is a painter, born and raised in Southern India.

As a young child Suchi was always interested in drawing and painting and it’s how she spent most of her free time. She learnt to paint through observation and experiment. Initially self-taught, Suchi’s fascination in portraying buildings started when she was about seven years old following a visit to an architect's office at the time her home was being built. It was a real feast to see entire walls covered with architectural drawings. This was her first understanding of perspective. She was amazed by how the viewer could visualise what was not completely depicted: this was a revelation to her.  It was only later that she was enthused into getting some formal training from K.C. Murukesan who is a senior artist from Kallandiri, well known for his abstract landscapes. His encouragement and techniques have influenced Suchi greatly.  She moved to London in 1998 and continues to visit India to draw inspiration.

For the last few years she has been concentrating on oil painting, and has been drawn to views of cities, their people, the architecture and the absorbing stories behind them. These are not painted in situ, rather they are painted from her distinctive memory of these places, often driven by my emotions. Suchi tries to capture the mood of these cities and narrate them on to the canvas with impressionistic strokes of thick oil paint with the use of a palette knife. They reveal the rhythm and movement of the people in these places, shifting between abstract and figurative. Large gatherings of people are depicted by sturdy streaks of colour, quite rich in texture. They unfold the flow of swarming crowds, the patterns they make as they move towards a focal point, generating harmony and a sense of unity. More recently, she has been working on a series of black and whites. For someone who is naturally drawn to colour, this has been an interesting experience. As a result, she has discovered much colour between black and white and loves the intensity and contrast it creates. Suchi has used this to depict London as she see’s it - full and bursting with energy. 

About Urban Landscape series:
Suchi discovered that oil paints applied with palette knives were a brilliant medium to narrate her interpretation of the fabric of the places she has visited. Suchi’s interpretations are not painted in situ but from memory, allowing fragments of visual data to combine with her subjective and emotional response. Urban landscape is an ongoing series that allows her to narrate what inspires her - hence some places revisited are re-interpreted more than others.

Suchi has been an ACAVA (Association for Cultural Advancement through Visual Art) artist since 2008. She held her first solo exhibition at the Nehru Centre, London in 2006 and has since participated in numerous exhibitions internationally, including India, Italy, Bahrain, UAE, Oman and England.