Each year the Princeton Symphony Orchestra’s Princeton Festival comes into the area like a late-spring burst of sonic color. With many of the performances held on the grounds of the Morven Museum and Garden, it’s a sublime blend of sound and vision.
It’s a perfect idea then, to wrap up the whole festival with a kind of flowery ribbon, using a range of watercolor florals to accent the graphics of the event, which runs Friday, June 7, through Saturday, June 22.
This year the PSO spotlights the artistic skills of Robbinsville resident and watercolorist Anandi Ramanathan, who has an art studio at Princeton Makes, an artist cooperative at the Princeton Shopping Center on North Harrison Street.
With her love and natural talent for painting flowers in vibrant watercolors, Ramanathan’s work—especially her cards—are getting noticed in the area. The PSO tapped into that talent, applying her florals to the Princeton Festival’s posters, flyers, and other marketing materials through a collaborative design process.
It all began on a day when Ramanathan wasn’t in the studio. Carolyn Dwyer, manager of marketing and communications for the PSO, wandered in and was immediately drawn to Ramanathan’s work.
“Carolyn bought some of my cards, and the next thing you know, I got an email that asked ‘would you like to be the featured artist for the PSO’s Princeton Festival?’” Ramanathan says. “I replied, ‘yes, I would love to!’”
“People have said my works being a sense of joy, and that’s what Carolyn said too—that the posters and materials for the Princeton Festival should being joy and happiness,” she says. “The PSO wanted the idea of music and florals in fusion. Because (the performance space) is outdoors at Morven, they wanted something floral to help decorate around the area. I mostly do florals in watercolor, so it was a perfect match.”
Ramanathan, an engineer by profession, likes to observe, admire and capture the beauty of the world in her works. She enjoys painting the little things she sees around her and likes to share these feelings of joy through her paintings.
Juggling the realms of technology and creativity, she has skillfully merged her business acumen with digital artistry, transforming her paintings into a variety of greeting cards, stickers, prints, scarves, and T-shirts for sale in more than 10 stores throughout New Jersey. Ramanathan chose the name Artcolorworks for her business venture.
Her paintings and cards really resonate with viewers and purchasers, and they seem to bring about a feeling of peace and a smile to the face in uncertain times.
She has had especially positive feedback at various local art and craft fairs. People wanted to know where they could buy her cards and thought Ramanathan would do well selling them at shops in the Princeton area.
She now offers her cards at at Cherry Grove Farm in Lawrence, That Pottery Place in West Windsor and Dandelion Wishes in Hopewell, as well as stores in Montclair and Elmer, and of course at her studio at Princeton Makes.
In addition, Ramanathan’s paintings and works have been displayed at Princeton University, West Windsor Arts, the Princeton Public Library, Fox Chase Cancer Center and Small World Coffee.
Even if you don’t go to the Princeton Festival, it will be easy to see Ramanathan’s work in public places: there’s a six-foot poster at the Princeton Junction train station for example. Or just look around Nassau Street, adorned with banners and smaller posters touting the festival.
Or go to the Princeton Festival’s website (princetonsymphony.org/festival)and you’ll be greeted by Ramanathan’s cheerful range of flowers in rose red, cornflower blue, pale pink and purple, orange and buttercup yellow.
It’s quite a leap forward for Ramanathan, who didn’t really paint seriously until about four years ago. She says she drew and doodled as a child growing up in Madurai, India, but she put away her pencils and paints for decades until recently.
Madurai is known as the Temple City of India. “It has a beautiful historic temple called Meenakshi temple,” says Ramanathan, who adds that she visited the site many, many times in her youth. “The sculptures and paintings in the temple were my all-time inspirations.”
After marrying her husband, Sathappan Sathappan, the couple moved to Bangalore, and Ramanathan took a crash course in watercolors at a place called Pencil and Chai. But that was essentially all the formal education she had in painting.
“Then, I moved here around the summer of 2019 to join my husband, who was working nearby (as a sales director at Indegene),” she says. “I wanted to try my hand at a hobby while I was searching for a steady job.”
“I was painting on a daily basis and looking for a job at the same time. But, even after I got a job”—she’s a financial software engineer for Accenture—“I kept painting,” Ramanathan says.
Aside from the one brief course in India, Ramanathan essentially taught herself and discovered that she just loved to paint. She assigned herself a 100-day project to paint a watercolor every day, even if it was just something small.
“I painted in broad daylight for 15 minutes daily, and this practice went on beyond the 100 days I had first planned because I was enjoying it so much,” she says. “Through this daily practice, I learned from my mistakes, in fact I wrote them down. I practiced shape and composition, played with which colors could be put together, etc. It took patience, but I really learned.”
Ramanathan’s self-education was so thorough that, once she was confident with her technique, she began teaching others.
She has hosted workshops and classes around the central Jersey area, notably at Princeton Middle School, where her classes are so popular, they’re completely booked, Ramanathan says. “That makes me feel like I’m doing something right,” she says.
“When I taught privately, I gave my students a watercolor set for them to take home,” she says. “It’s actually a difficult medium, but I wanted to make my students comfortable with the process, help them to feel like they could do watercolors easily. I tell them, ‘just take 15 minutes each day and create something.’”
Peruse Ramanathan’s website and you’ll see that she has explored many styles above and beyond florals, working in both watercolors and acrylics. This writer especially likes her artwork inspired by India, such as “Swans in a Lake,” created in the intricate Indian folk art style of Kerala mural painting.
Then there are her mandalas, many of which represent or connect with the seven energy centers of the human body, known as chakras, which translates to “disks” or “wheels” in Sanskrit.
While her father’s main professional focus in India was his home appliance business, he also taught yoga and meditation to young Anandi and her siblings, and so she has had a deep understanding of the significance of the chakra system since her youth.
In addition, her homemaker mother shared Reiki, an ancient technique that utilizes non-invasive “energy touch” to help reduce stress and anxiety. Both yoga and Reiki incorporate the balancing, healing, and sometimes opening of the chakras.
“Each mandala, each of which is in a different color, is designed to represent a different chakra,” she says.
For example, you can see her mandala in red for the root chakra, which stands for strength, passion, and power.
Ramanathan says her influences are not the most well-known artists, but individuals such as Jenna Rainey, Garima Srivatsava, and Sushma Hegde, all of whom have written inspirational books on the technique and artistry of watercolors. She adds that nature itself is probably her biggest influence, and says she gets ideas when taking walks in nature, or even when she’s in the shower.
Of the many designs she has created for her cards, the biggest seller has been her “New Jersey” cards, which are a simple outline of New Jersey, filled in with a bevy of beautiful flowers, fruits, and vegetables, especially appropriate considering we are the Garden State.
“The idea for the ‘New Jersey’ cards came when I was taking a shower,” Ramanathan says. “I’ve sold more than 150 of these in a year and a half, and this is at a time when people don’t really send cards anymore.”
“But people just seem to love to send these New Jersey cards, to show pride in their state, and they’re going all around the world,” she stays. “It’s so nice to know that a piece of my soul is traveling all over.”
Ramanathan’s watercolor floral designs can be seen all around Princeton during the Princeton Festival, Friday, June 7 through Saturday, June 22. On the web: princetonsymphony.org/festival.
Ramanathan’s studio is in the Princeton Makes artist cooperative, 301 North Harrison Street, Princeton. On the web: princetonmakes.com
Ramanathan on the web: artcolourworks.wixsite.com/artcolorworks. On Instagram: instagram.com/anandi_art_class.
Art by Robbinsville resident Anandi Ramanathan will be featured at this year’s Princeton Festival in June.,
