Amita Bhakta

I moved from India as a teenager and am now settled in the beautiful Tennessee Valley area of North Alabama. My work is filled with stories from the land of my ancestors and ties to my present and future. This mix of cultures is displayed in all my paintings and clay artwork.
I believe that if art (whether visual, performing, or literature) is eliminated from people’s lives, civilized society would struggle to exist. It’s clear that artists breathe freshness, growth, vitality, energy, and life into our social fabric and consciousness. Without art – society would stop flourishing and renewing itself – it would become stale, stagnate, and eventually decay. I am privileged to be part of the tribe of artists.
In any medium my aim is to please the eye, challenge my brain, and satisfy my soul. My community, my world, and the events in it motivates me to create – this itself has become my narrative.
I have come to realize that role of art cannot be separated from the narrative of my life. To me my paintings are like sonnets that tell stories with colors, lines, and shapes that challenge, excite, and immerse me. In this line, if my paintings are my sonnets then my pottery are my haikus – where the shape is my narrative. Whether it is functional or nonfunctional, working with clay, I can create the most interesting shapes, reflective of my cultural background, and events around me.