Nancy Totten and Chitra Sharma are an art making duo based in the DMV. The artists first met while teaching art at the same school in DC, and realised over time that they hold shared beliefs about the nature of art, and its intersection with design and craft.  Through their individual work they find a lot of crossover in their interests and themes. 

Within this body of work, Chitra Sharma explores warmth, nesting, and the home, using both textile and painting mediums to consider how color and form can be used to express emotion.  Chitra’s work is a response to her personal surroundings and focuses on the themes of movement, isolation and the relationships between our inner and outer worlds. Her work develops organically, allowing the medium to drive and influence the process. 

Nancy Totten’s work reflects a search for an ephemeral vision of the world and how she experiences her surroundings. Her work unfolds familiar settings into a novel interpretation of the spaces. Nancy’s work is made through a process of deconstructing existing systems and reorganizing the picture plane using both organic imagery and geometric shapes. This process contextualizes the way these structures are perceived.  Her work is primarily oil on canvas and acrylic on black paper.

Both Chitra and Nancy rely on the shifting interplay between pattern, color and scale as a way to explore their themes. In this way, their combined work in this exhibition is reminiscent of a kaleidoscope.