Artist Spotlight: Anvita Gupta

On Consciousness, Creativity, and Colourful Concepts

By Bharati Kondepudy

Tell us a bit about you, the person behind the work we see.

I’m Anvita, based out of Pune but have been living quite a nomadic life switching cities and countries in the past few years. I have studied architecture from Krvia Mumbai and switched to illustrations and art installations post that. I’ve worked with various design firms and did freelance artist work with some known brands, along with that I was a part of a juried exhibition hosted by the LGBTQ community in Dallas. After the third wave of the pandemic, I started my full-time career as a visual designer for a global business media company and love how it juices up my creative brain.

Describe your artistic process. Is there anything specific that inspires you?

I feel art is pretty vast and deep. It’s an everyday research and learning process for me to incorporate the divergent thinking, visual research and my intuitions stitched together to make a base foundation. I do have a very high inclination towards the history or the origin of the subject I'm creating for. It juices up my sensitivity towards building up the concepts and I majorly concentrate on the attributes as per my vision and understanding of the project brief or artwork I'm creating. Also, nature and a person's being inspire me to its maximum depth.

Your illustrations are incredibly detailed, sharp and precise. How did you develop your unique art style?

It’s my 10 years of learning experience I'd say to make my style mine! Being out in the field, my artistic voice has always been an effort to highlight the intricacies and sensitivity of what I'm creating for. Exploring my tools, improving my craft, refining my taste and finding my voice have been the major stages for me so far and I'm still learning. I feel my strength is to see the unseen. Can safely say that my forte lies in strong understanding of the fundamentals of color theory and palettes as per the brief/subject. I feel it's an overall conscious research and maintaining a certain perspective yet evolving with every design I create.

Your art addresses issues around the environment, specifically sustainable living and climate change. What do you think is the role in influencing conversations around these issues?

I’ve grown up watching my parents practising sustainability at home for simpler things like composting, growing herbs from vegetable ends, and reuse of plastic. I have then consciously bagged a few known names on me who are promoting awareness around climate change and sustainable lifestyle on a bigger and deeper scale. Also, enlightenment towards how rich and deep-rooted is the Ayurveda, by all means, has been on my visual checklist to create around the power it holds. I do seek to create environmental and social impact through my visuals especially to promote zero waste solutions to empower local communities and change the mindset on sustainability by educating through descriptive visuals.

Most of your art features women. How important is this to you?

Women empowerment has been a heavy part of my portfolio. Being a woman, the approach of understanding sensitivity and perspective, I have somehow attracted the woman-oriented concerns to be put out there in the most subtle yet contrasting way that is summarised in a stone carved message via my creatives. The attempt is to put out a voice through visuals because as per human psychology we tend to grasp more visually than read texts. So maintaining the subtle line and keeping it rock solid with the intention is the core idea here and it is of utmost importance for me as it comes with a responsibility.

What does art mean to you?

I have this printed in my being: “there is art in anything and everything.” For me, art is my whole being. It’s the senses, like the touch of the cotton texture, the curiosity of knowing the unexplored, the visual thinking that follows after seeing a frame of good light and shadow play and so forth. Studying design fundamentals in my architecture college, the horizon of creative thinking has been endless since then and it's been never enough to find what it means to me.

What’s next for you?

It is my desire to stand out and be recognised on a bigger bandwidth. I have always seemed for international clients and exposure and was blessed enough to achieve some of it. My career goal is to produce illustrations for nationally established clients and to have my work internationally recognized for its quality and conceptual inventiveness by my peers. I wish to illustrate for the publishing, advertising, marketing, and design industries. But I'm really focused on my current role in my organisation and creating some incredible designs.

Find them on Instagram: @thirdeyestories