Reena Y.
Ramakrishnan
Painter · Art Therapist · Co-founder, The Art & Therapy Loft
Reena Y. Ramakrishnan is a Mumbai-based painter, Art Therapist, and co-founder of The Art & Therapy Loft.
Drawn to colour from an early age, her curiosity led her beyond its visual qualities into its relationship with emotions, imagination, memory, and the human psyche. Over five years of training in Art Therapy, she studied the transformative potential of creative expression — an experience that continues to influence the sensitivity and depth of her painting practice.
Working primarily in oil and watercolour, Reena's paintings explore the meeting point of landscape and inner experience. Rather than depicting places, her paintings evoke spaces that are felt, inviting viewers into moments of stillness, reflection, and discovery. Her work has been exhibited in group and solo exhibitions across various cities, and she is currently developing new bodies of work that continue her exploration of landscape as both a physical and psychological terrain.
Alongside her studio practice, Reena conducts Creative Inner Work sessions at The Art & Therapy Loft in Mumbai — a space she co-founded to nurture artistic exploration, self-expression, and meaningful engagement with the arts.
The Process
Rather than depicting places, the paintings evoke spaces that are felt. They emerge from a sustained engagement with matter as a way of grounding presence. Painting, for me, is not an act of expression as much as one of orientation — of coming into relationship with the physical world through the slow making of form.
Each painting unfolds through an ongoing dialogue between gesture, material, and time. Marks are laid down, covered, erased, and rediscovered. Layers accumulate gradually, carrying the memory of decisions, pauses, resistance, and return. Distance allows perception to shift, whereas returning with intention deepens the conversation. The work reveals itself slowly rather than arriving with certainty.
The landscapes that emerge are not depictions of external places but rather inner terrains. Drawing from the qualities of earth, stone, light, and atmosphere, they exist somewhere between memory and presence. Stripped of narrative, they become spaces where impermanence and resilience coexist, where boundaries offer grounding rather than enclosure.
Rather than directing meaning, the paintings remain open. They ask only for attention. In that encounter, each viewer is invited to arrive through presence rather than explanation.
The work does not seek to narrate or resolve, but becomes a space where the viewer's own perception becomes central. I create spaces within the canvas that can be entered rather than read. As the viewer moves through those landscapes, I hope to create responses through the encounter — not responses that are guided or predetermined. What I am asking through these paintings is for presence, without searching for answers or conclusions.— Reena Y. Ramakrishnan, Artist Statement
The Origin
There was a time when being in the world felt uncertain — when loss, separation, and the quiet weight of impermanence made presence itself difficult. What was missing was not direction, but ground: a felt sense of where I was, and whether I could find a place to stand.
Painting entered my life not as a means of expression, but as a necessity. It became a way of returning to the physical world through the slow making of form. In working with matter, I found something that neither explained nor demanded. It offered resistance, weight, boundary, and the possibility of staying. Over time, painting became less about making images and more about inhabiting the world. Each mark, each layer, each return to the surface became an act of orientation — a way of arriving, again and again, into presence.
I find myself repeatedly drawn to the mineral world. Unlike the living landscape, it asks for nothing. It simply endures. Stone, earth, weathered surfaces, and elemental forms carry a sense of time spacious enough to hold both impermanence and resilience. They offer stability without insistence, presence without demand. These paintings are not attempts to resolve uncertainty. They are places where it can be held — not landscapes to be looked at, but places to arrive within.
If I were to stop painting, what would be at risk is not simply a practice, but a way of remaining connected to the world. Painting is where the inner and the physical meet, where attention becomes matter, where presence becomes form, and where I continue to discover a place in which I can remain.
CV Highlights
A selected exhibition history, education, and press will be listed here.
- Training
- Five years of formal training in Art Therapy
- Practice
- Co-founder, The Art & Therapy Loft — Mumbai
- Exhibitions
- Group & solo exhibitions across various cities — details to follow
- Mediums
- Oil & Watercolour