Ashwini Sadekar

Ashwini Sadekar is a Seattle-based oil painter who uses light and color to create still lifes that almost resemble abstract paintings with obvious influences of scientific investigation, nature, and her own culture.

Originally from West-Central India, Sadekar obtained her graduate degree in Electronics Engineering from Carleton University in Canada. Her training with such artists as Charles Miano, Camille Przewodek, and Kimberly Trowbridge shows in her work, and the relationship between geometry and color is the most prominent theme in Ashwini’s collections. Her current collections express the seasonal motifs of the Pacific Northwest and the color spectrums residing in the PNW’s flora and fauna.

Color is Ashwini Sadekar’s creative motivation. She lives and breathes color, seeing it as an indicator of individual experience. Her work aims to investigate the nature of color. She asks, “is it perceptual or conceptual? A science or a sensation? Physical or intellectual? Tangible or intangible? Spontaneous or calculated?” She always reaches that same conclusion, that color is a unique experience perceived by each individual on a cellular level. 

The PNW provides Ashwini with a seasonal perspective of color, with certain colors invoking a specific response from her as the cycles turn and the leaves change. From red to purple, the colors of the rainbow are present in Washington’s lush reserves of evergreens, daffodils, and peonies, and in the goldfinches and chickadees that flower the trees with their feathers.

Ashwini’s “Stylish Spring” collection is an ode to the light that blossoms out of the darkness of Winter. She uses color to play with contrast and to mark “the illusion of light.” Her “A Touch of Gold” painting depicts bright, yellow daffodils as centerpieces in otherwise dark settings. Reds and oranges highlight the light emanating from the daffodils and set them apart from the blacks, blues, and greens surrounding them. This is how Ashwini creates the perception of light without a light source. The viewer feels the brightness of life blooming after a dormant season. Color is alive in Ashwini’s work. The painting “The Golden Garnet” explores space, light, and landscape with color as the modem of movement. As the viewer, we are moving through this piece and experiencing the bright, outdoor corridors of a sunlit alleyway. There are cultural influences here, showcasing the quieter side of the city and the nature that still permeates manmade backroads. The flowers and buildings depicted in this painting share a semblance in how they are both made up of geometric shapes–shapes that create movement. Ashwini describes her work as being “a vibrant dance between Impressionism and Classical Realism,” which shows in this collection.

Ashwini’s studies under Charles Miano, Camille Przewodek, and Kimberly Trowbridge are apparent in her work.

While she certainly has mastered her own style, the concepts of natural geometry and light present in human and animal figures and the environment are a common thread present in the work of all aforementioned creators. Ashwini is also heavily influenced by the work of Claude Monet, famous for his impressionist landscapes.

The mathematical side of her engineering education is also called upon in Ashwini's work, in the correlation between colors and the geometric formulas present in each flower and figure. With her favorite creative tool being a standard color wheel, it’s obvious that color rules Ashiwini’s creative process. It’s her point of direction from the very beginning of a project and is what shapes the entire piece. She paints “using a full spectrum palette.” 

Her favorite quote, as stated by Monet, is

“Color is my day-long obsession, joy and torment.” 

While professionally trained and toting academic knowledge of creative movements and processes, Ashwini has modernized her influences and created a process that reflects the roots of technological concepts that can be found in nature. Her latest exhibit was “A World of Color” at the Seward Park Audubon Center on October 16th, 2022. She is “a color scientist who uses her YouTube channel to teach color theory and drawing fundamentals.” If you’d like to watch some of her video courses, her channel name is her given name, Ashwini Sadekar. She can also be found on Instagram under @ashwinisadekar.