Aruna Rao

 

A R T I S T   B I O

 

Aruna is originally from India and was born and raised there. She comes from a literary family and was exposed to Western literature and arts in her formative years. Much of what she read and saw made an impression on her. Her introduction to Western art was through books on French impressionist paintings and it was the works of artists such as Degas, Monet, and Van Gogh, which first sparked her love for painting. Even as a child, she had a natural flair for drawing and a proclivity for colorful images. Though her formal training at that time was in Computers and her career took her in a different direction, she continued to cherish the arts and even dabbled in painting on occasion. 

 

She immigrated to the US in ‘96 and worked in the Information Technology (IT) industry for almost 20 years. In 2012 while living and working in California, she began painting in oils in her spare time and soon found herself captivated by it. She wanted to take her interest further and enrolled in the MFA program at the Academy of Art University in San Francisco. She quit her IT job in 2016 and has since been focusing full time on her artistic pursuits. In 2018, she received her MFA in painting. While working on her MFA, she lived in California and Michigan. She moved to Colorado in 2018 and has made Colorado Springs her home, where she lives with her husband and her three adorable cats. 

* This statement has been provided directly by the artist in association to their 14^th International ARC Salon entries. This content has not been edited for typos or grammatical errors and has not been vetted for accuracy.