Statement

I grew up in India, surrounded by a natural landscape and shaped by mythology, ritual, and layered systems of belief. These early experiences continue to inform my work. Living in California has further deepened my relationship to color, space, and possibility. The Bay Area at this moment feels generative, with a sense of freedom and expansiveness that encourages experimentation and a belief in the improbable. These conditions ground me in a way of working that is both intuitive and expansive.

My practice moves between discipline and intuition. I return to paintings over long periods of time, building and undoing, shifting color, reworking forms, and allowing the image to arrive slowly. Through this process, the surface holds a sense of memory, accumulation, and change. My work emphasizes the materiality of paint and frequently has a topographical presence because I am drawn to the physicality of paint and its capacity for feeling. Color is a generative force, at times luminous and expansive, at others muted and atmospheric, guiding the composition and opening space to explore nature and the interior experience. Figures emerge through improvisation, often fluid or fragmentary, carrying traces of multiple identities and states of being.

My teachers and inspirations emerge from art history, music, literature, and ancient cultures, including Vedic, Egyptian, Greek, and Roman traditions. I am interested in creating works that remain open, with a capacity for the ambiguous and unresolved. My goal, whatever the medium, is to experience and express the poetic, inchoate, and eternal.

Bio

Amrita Singhal is a painter, printmaker, ceramist and mixed media artist based in Berkeley, California. She studied drawing and art history with the brilliant and reclusive painter Louise Smith who was a colleague of the Bay Area Abstract Expressionists (Diebenkorn, Park, Bischoff et al.) and a one time student of Hans Hoffman and Erle Loran at UC Berkeley. Two of Amrita’s paintings are in the collection of the UC Berkeley Art Museum (BAM) and will be on display between August 2026 through April 2027 in a new BAM show called Utopia (https://bampfa.org/program/some-particular-heaven-ideas-utopia-bampfa-collection). She has painted a Berkeley Public Works Art mural for Meyer Sound and regularly exhibits her work in solo, group and juried shows. Amrita is also creating a series of immersive works in virtual reality.

Amrita Singhal CV

Education
J.D., University of Colorado, Boulder, CO
B.A., University of California, Berkeley, CA

Board of Directors
Kala Art Institute (2018–Present)
Green Science Policy Institute (2016–2018)
Berkeley Community Scholars (2007–2016)

Public Art
The Rama Mural, Meyer Sound, Berkeley, CA (2023)

Solo Exhibitions
2026 Hello, Moon, Kala Art Institute Smullen Print Room and Gallery, Berkeley, CA; The Faculty Club, UC Berkeley, Berkeley, CA
2025 The Faculty Club, UC Berkeley, Berkeley, CA
2024 Manny’s, San Francisco, CA; The Faculty Club, UC Berkeley, Berkeley, CA; Nothing Lasts, Everything Matters, SHOH Gallery, Berkeley, CA 

2023 The Faculty Club, UC Berkeley, Berkeley, CA
2021 Seek, Memory, SHOH Gallery, Berkeley, CA
2020 The Faculty Club, UC Berkeley, Berkeley, CA
2019 Between the Real and Imagined, SHOH Gallery, Berkeley, CA
2016 Studies and Observations, SHOH Gallery, Berkeley, CA 


Selected Group Exhibitions

2026 (upcoming) Some Particular Heaven: Ideas of Utopia in the BAMPFA Collection, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, Berkeley, CA

2026 (upcoming) Made In This Place, curated by Art Is Awesome / Ingleside Gallery / KALW, San Francisco, CA;

2026 Tactile, 1942 Bonita Art Gallery, Berkeley, CA 

2026 Of the World—Preserving Tactility in the Digital Age, 35 Meadow Street, Brooklyn, NY
2025 Identities, Livermore Valley Arts, Livermore, CA; Artists’ Vision, Marin Society of Artists, San Rafael, CA
2024 Dualities, O’Hanlon Center for the Arts, Mill Valley, CA; A Gathering of Color, Falkirk Cultural Center, San Rafael, CA
2023 The Space Between, Arc Project Gallery, San Francisco, CA; SFWA Annual Bay Area Artists’ Choice, San Francisco Women Artists Gallery, San Francisco, CA; Landscape Perspectives, Art Works Downtown, San Rafael, CA; Art and Cultures of the World, Marin Society of Artists, San Rafael, CA; Kala Annual Auction, Kala Art Gallery, Berkeley, CA
2022 Faber Birren National Color Show, Stamford Art Association, Stamford, CT; Winter Group Show, Kala Art Gallery, Berkeley, CA; Kala Art Auction, Kala Art Gallery, Berkeley, CA
2021 Idaherma Museum of Art Foundation Online Exhibition; Extraction, Sebastopol Center for the Arts; Faber Birren Color Award Exhibit, Stamford Art Association, Stamford, CT; Fresno Printmakers Guild Exhibition; Cotuit Center for the Arts, Cotuit, MA; Gardiner Gallery, Oklahoma State University, Stillwater, OK; Edward A. Dixon Gallery, Dayton, OH; Musée de Peinture de Saint-Frajou, France; Berkeley Art Center, Berkeley, CA; Healdsburg Center for the Arts, Healdsburg, CA; Kala Art Institute, Berkeley, CA
2020 Medford Art Center, Medford, NJ; Milford Arts Council, Milford, CT; Sebastopol Center for the Arts, Sebastopol, CA; Arc Gallery, San Francisco, CA; Sacramento Arts Center, Sacramento, CA; Kala Art Institute, Berkeley, CA

Awards
Third Prize Award, Marin Society of Artists (2023)
Juror’s Choice Award, Cotuit Center for the Arts (2021)
Honorable Mention, Cimarron National Works on Paper Exhibition (2021)