BiographyKamala Subramanian is a Washington, DC area artist of mixed heritage, South Asian Indian and African American. She was born and raised in the District of Columbia attended DC public schools including the Literary Arts Program and George Washington University Careers in the Arts now Duke Ellington, graduated with a BFA from Temple University, Tyler School of Fine Arts, Rome, Italy and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania with post graduate work in Child Psychology at Maryland University, College Park, Maryland and teaching accreditation credits at Bowie State College. She took credits in her last year at Temple in the psychology department with Art Therapy and did an art therapy practicum in the Philadelphia school systems which lead to a love of teaching art. Before leaving Philadelphia, Kamala volunteered at the Brandywine Printmaking Studio where she assisted in the printmaking process on the work of several great artists’ such as Romare Bearden and David Driscoll. Later, she moved back to DC where she has taught art at the Smithsonian’s Discover Graphics Program, was a Kennedy Center Fellow, Design Department Graphics Coordinator at Arthur Andersen and Co., and has taught at a myriad of schools throughout the DC metro area, currently at the SEED PCS of Washington, DC. Subramanian also exhibits her work at a variety of galleries over the years in the DC Metro area. Her work is in the collection of many private owners in America and on display in galleries in Italy, as well as embassies in Ethiopia and the Ivory Coast. Subramanian has also worked on several murals in DC including with the Young Masters on the Brookland Bridge as well as a commissioned piece in the new Anacostia Library at 18th and Good Hope Road, SE.
Subramanian considers her art as an expression of her life’s observations, experiences and emotions incorporating layers of intense color, line and texture. She creates expressively and intuitively. She constantly experiments with a variety of mediums, materials and found objects that have been collected over the years through her travels, experiences and teaching. Subramanian reflects much on her teaching as an important aspect of her experiences and the many lives she has encountered that are very much a part of her art. Her mediums of choice are whatever excites her in the moment - inks, acrylics, oils, watercolors, graphite, pastels, found objects and anything within her grasp and emotions. The subjects alternate between reality and her imagination. Her most recent art works have been focused on the emotions and traumas of the Middle Passage in abstracted terms.
