Siddharth Parasnis
"I think my colors come from my conscious and subconscious experiences, and from the life that I have witnessed so far in India and here in the United States. I guess subconsciously color sort of gets carved in your brain every single minute of the life that you are living. Then while painting, it all comes out; I guess colors find the right places for themselves in the painting. I have to react to canvas spontaneously. Then the canvas gives me back something, a puzzle, a question, a direction, and then depending on what has happened, I sometimes 'choose' the next move. I guess that can be called 'carefully controlled'." - Siddharth Parasnis
Biography
Siddharth Parasnis balances a sense of physical place with pure color and form. In his recent paintings, he continues to mine the intersection of art, manmade structures, and landscape, filtering reality through his imagination and unconscious, layering shapes and building up regions of luminous color, from turquoise to coral to brick-red. His compositions, infused with light but often spiked with sharp angles, convey complex emotions even as they outwardly depict calm scenes, such as boats on a seashore. It is telling that the artists Parasnis cites as influences—Willem de Kooning, Dennis Hopper, Nathan Oliveira, Richard Diebenkorn—are those he admires for the quality of expression in their art: Hopper for his ambiance; de Kooning for his expressive marks; Oliveira and Diebenkorn for their “spirituality and color.”
Each of Parasnis’s paintings possesses a unique color harmony that the artist captures in a single session, though he may continue to work on the painting for months or years afterward. He calls this capturing “the soul of the painting”; the act that gives the painting “life” or “birth.” Each painting’s structure, too, tends to arise organically, with forms based on places from the artist’s life and travels assuming new relationships and energy as he translates them into paint. Parasnis spent his childhood in India; alongside Hopper, de Kooning, Diebenkorn, and Oliveira, his influences range from pre-modern Indian miniature painting, in which artists conveyed depth through stacked imagery rather than through three-point perspective, to Mark Rothko’s color field paintings. Yet as curator Dieter Tremp has noted, Parasnis’s style is all his own—“full of independent life, in a balance of sensuality and structure unlike anything else we’ve seen so far.”
Born in Pune, India, Parasnis has lived and worked in San Francisco since arriving in 2001 to pursue his MFA. His paintings have been shown at numerous venues in the U.S., Europe, and India, including museum exhibitions at the Crocker Art Museum in Sacramento and the Bakersfield Art Museum, where his work was exhibited alongside that of Oliveira, Diebenkorn, Elmer Bischoff, Joan Brown, Theophilus Brown, and other renowned Bay Area artists. Parasnis is the recipient of a 2102–13 Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant, with his work reviewed in publications including The Huffington Post, Art Ltd., and American Art Collector. His public and corporate collections include Dell Computers, the Galesburg Civic Art Center in Illinois, and the South Central Zone Cultural Center in Nagpur, India.
Born
1977 India
Education
MFA, Painting, Academy of Art University, San Francisco, CA.
BFA, Illustration and Advertising, Directorate of Art, Bombay, India.
Teaching
2005-08 MFA, Directed Study Advisor, Academy of Art, San Francisco, CA.
Selected Awards and Grants
2012-13 Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant
2008 Juried Exhibit, The Art Museum of Los Gatos, CA.
2007 GALEX 41, Galesburg Civic Art Center, Galesburg, IL.
2005 XPO XXIV, BJ Spoke Gallery, Huntington, NY.
2001 Annual National Juried Exhibition, The Art Society of India, Bombay, India.
1999 Annual National Juried Exhibition, The Art Society of India, Bombay, India.
Museum Exhibitions
2017 78th Crocker Kingsley Exhibition, Crocker Art Museum, Sacramento, CA
2016 Triton Museum of Art, Santa Clara, CA.
2014 Bakersfield Museum of Art, Bakersfield, CA.
2012 Legacy in Continuum: Bay Area Figuration, Bakersfield Museum of Art, Bakersfield, CA.
2008 Expressions West, Coos Art Museum, Coos Bay, OR.
Painterly Painting: The Next Level, The Art Museum of Los Gatos, Los Gatos, CA.
2007 Juried Exhibit, The Art Museum of Los Gatos, Los Gatos, CA.
2005 74th Crocker Kingsley Exhibition, Crocker Art Museum, Sacramento, CA.
Corporate and Public Collections
Crocker Art Museum, Sacramento, CA • Mandarin Hotel, San Francisco, CA. • The Priscilla and Mark Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital, San Francisco, CA. • Dell Foundation, Austin, TX. • The Kidney Group, Fort Lauderdale, FL. • Galesburg Civic Art Center, Galesburg, IL. • South Central Zone Cultural Center, Nagpur, India • Bakersfield Museum of Art, Bakersfield, CA • Stanford Medical Center, Palo Alto, CA
Selected Solo Exhibitions
2021 Caldwell Snyder Gallery, St. Helena, CA
2021 Utopia, Caldwell Snyder Gallery, San Francisco, CA.
2019 Hues & Harmony, Caldwell Snyder Gallery, San Francisco, CA
2018 Serendipity, Caldwell Snyder Gallery, St. Helena, CA.
2017 Caldwell Snyder Gallery, San Francisco, CA.
2017 Discovering Color, Caldwell Snyder Gallery, SF, CA.
2016 Serenity, Caldwell Snyder Gallery, San Francisco, CA.
2015 Caldwell Snyder Gallery, St. Helena, CA.
Solitude, Campton Gallery, New York, NY.
2014 Ambiance Not Identity, Caldwell Snyder Gallery, San Francisco, CA.
Invisible Lines, MA Doran Gallery, Tulsa, OK.
Equivocal Spaces, Sue Greenwood Fine Art, Laguna Beach, CA.
2013 Caldwell Snyder Gallery, San Francisco, CA.
Architectonic Hues, Sue Greenwood Fine Art, Laguna Beach, CA.
2012 Wanderlust, Dolby Chadwick Gallery, San Francisco, CA.
Nostalgia, Sue Greenwood Fine Art, Laguna Beach, CA.
2009 Habitation, Sue Greenwood Fine Art, Laguna Beach, CA.
Architecture of Emotion, Hang Gallery, San Francisco, CA.
Hang Gallery, San Francisco, CA.
Color Fields, Sue Greenwood Fine Art, Laguna Beach, CA.
I Was There Once, Phoenix Gallery, Park City, UT.
2008 Presence, Sue Greenwood Fine Art, Laguna Beach, CA.
2007 Architectural Gestures, Chroma Gallery, Savannah, GA. 2006 Architectural Abstracts, Hang Gallery, San Francisco, CA.
2003 GO Gallery, Amsterdam, Holland.
Press
PRESS
Selected Artworks
Born
1977 India
Education
MFA, Painting, Academy of Art University, San Francisco, CA.
BFA, Illustration and Advertising, Directorate of Art, Bombay, India.
Teaching
2005-08 MFA, Directed Study Advisor, Academy of Art, San Francisco, CA.
Selected Awards and Grants
2012-13 Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant
2008 Juried Exhibit, The Art Museum of Los Gatos, CA.
2007 GALEX 41, Galesburg Civic Art Center, Galesburg, IL.
2005 XPO XXIV, BJ Spoke Gallery, Huntington, NY.
2001 Annual National Juried Exhibition, The Art Society of India, Bombay, India.
1999 Annual National Juried Exhibition, The Art Society of India, Bombay, India.
Museum Exhibitions
2017 78th Crocker Kingsley Exhibition, Crocker Art Museum, Sacramento, CA
2016 Triton Museum of Art, Santa Clara, CA.
2014 Bakersfield Museum of Art, Bakersfield, CA.
2012 Legacy in Continuum: Bay Area Figuration, Bakersfield Museum of Art, Bakersfield, CA.
2008 Expressions West, Coos Art Museum, Coos Bay, OR.
Painterly Painting: The Next Level, The Art Museum of Los Gatos, Los Gatos, CA.
2007 Juried Exhibit, The Art Museum of Los Gatos, Los Gatos, CA.
2005 74th Crocker Kingsley Exhibition, Crocker Art Museum, Sacramento, CA.
Corporate and Public Collections
Crocker Art Museum, Sacramento, CA • Mandarin Hotel, San Francisco, CA. • The Priscilla and Mark Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital, San Francisco, CA. • Dell Foundation, Austin, TX. • The Kidney Group, Fort Lauderdale, FL. • Galesburg Civic Art Center, Galesburg, IL. • South Central Zone Cultural Center, Nagpur, India • Bakersfield Museum of Art, Bakersfield, CA • Stanford Medical Center, Palo Alto, CA
Selected Solo Exhibitions
2021 Caldwell Snyder Gallery, St. Helena, CA
2021 Utopia, Caldwell Snyder Gallery, San Francisco, CA.
2019 Hues & Harmony, Caldwell Snyder Gallery, San Francisco, CA
2018 Serendipity, Caldwell Snyder Gallery, St. Helena, CA.
2017 Caldwell Snyder Gallery, San Francisco, CA.
2017 Discovering Color, Caldwell Snyder Gallery, SF, CA.
2016 Serenity, Caldwell Snyder Gallery, San Francisco, CA.
2015 Caldwell Snyder Gallery, St. Helena, CA.
Solitude, Campton Gallery, New York, NY.
2014 Ambiance Not Identity, Caldwell Snyder Gallery, San Francisco, CA.
Invisible Lines, MA Doran Gallery, Tulsa, OK.
Equivocal Spaces, Sue Greenwood Fine Art, Laguna Beach, CA.
2013 Caldwell Snyder Gallery, San Francisco, CA.
Architectonic Hues, Sue Greenwood Fine Art, Laguna Beach, CA.
2012 Wanderlust, Dolby Chadwick Gallery, San Francisco, CA.
Nostalgia, Sue Greenwood Fine Art, Laguna Beach, CA.
2009 Habitation, Sue Greenwood Fine Art, Laguna Beach, CA.
Architecture of Emotion, Hang Gallery, San Francisco, CA.
Hang Gallery, San Francisco, CA.
Color Fields, Sue Greenwood Fine Art, Laguna Beach, CA.
I Was There Once, Phoenix Gallery, Park City, UT.
2008 Presence, Sue Greenwood Fine Art, Laguna Beach, CA.
2007 Architectural Gestures, Chroma Gallery, Savannah, GA. 2006 Architectural Abstracts, Hang Gallery, San Francisco, CA.
2003 GO Gallery, Amsterdam, Holland.
Siddharth Parasnis balances a sense of physical place with pure color and form. In his recent paintings, he continues to mine the intersection of art, manmade structures, and landscape, filtering reality through his imagination and unconscious, layering shapes and building up regions of luminous color, from turquoise to coral to brick-red. His compositions, infused with light but often spiked with sharp angles, convey complex emotions even as they outwardly depict calm scenes, such as boats on a seashore. It is telling that the artists Parasnis cites as influences—Willem de Kooning, Dennis Hopper, Nathan Oliveira, Richard Diebenkorn—are those he admires for the quality of expression in their art: Hopper for his ambiance; de Kooning for his expressive marks; Oliveira and Diebenkorn for their “spirituality and color.”
Each of Parasnis’s paintings possesses a unique color harmony that the artist captures in a single session, though he may continue to work on the painting for months or years afterward. He calls this capturing “the soul of the painting”; the act that gives the painting “life” or “birth.” Each painting’s structure, too, tends to arise organically, with forms based on places from the artist’s life and travels assuming new relationships and energy as he translates them into paint. Parasnis spent his childhood in India; alongside Hopper, de Kooning, Diebenkorn, and Oliveira, his influences range from pre-modern Indian miniature painting, in which artists conveyed depth through stacked imagery rather than through three-point perspective, to Mark Rothko’s color field paintings. Yet as curator Dieter Tremp has noted, Parasnis’s style is all his own—“full of independent life, in a balance of sensuality and structure unlike anything else we’ve seen so far.”
Born in Pune, India, Parasnis has lived and worked in San Francisco since arriving in 2001 to pursue his MFA. His paintings have been shown at numerous venues in the U.S., Europe, and India, including museum exhibitions at the Crocker Art Museum in Sacramento and the Bakersfield Art Museum, where his work was exhibited alongside that of Oliveira, Diebenkorn, Elmer Bischoff, Joan Brown, Theophilus Brown, and other renowned Bay Area artists. Parasnis is the recipient of a 2102–13 Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant, with his work reviewed in publications including The Huffington Post, Art Ltd., and American Art Collector. His public and corporate collections include Dell Computers, the Galesburg Civic Art Center in Illinois, and the South Central Zone Cultural Center in Nagpur, India.
Biography
Press
"I think my colors come from my conscious and subconscious experiences, and from the life that I have witnessed so far in India and here in the United States. I guess subconsciously color sort of gets carved in your brain every single minute of the life that you are living. Then while painting, it all comes out; I guess colors find the right places for themselves in the painting. I have to react to canvas spontaneously. Then the canvas gives me back something, a puzzle, a question, a direction, and then depending on what has happened, I sometimes 'choose' the next move. I guess that can be called 'carefully controlled'." - Siddharth Parasnis
Siddharth Parasnis
The idea of architectural expression and space has been depicted in painting for centuries, whether actual or abstracted. Living and working in the San Francisco Bay area, Siddharth sees the proportional elements of the architectural realities while distilling the images down to the abstractions of space, volume and color. Our eyes linger and discover the complexity of the architectural worlds he create.
"I think my colors come from my conscious and subconscious experiences, and from the life that I have witnessed so far in India and here in the United States. I guess subconsciously color sort of gets carved in your brain every single minute of the life that you are living. Then while painting, it all comes out; I guess colors find the right places for themselves in the painting. I have to react to canvas spontaneously. Then the canvas gives me back something, a puzzle, a question, a direction, and then depending on what has happened, I sometimes 'choose' the next move. I guess that can be called 'carefully controlled'." - Siddharth Parasnis