Artist: Anagha Deshmukh
When Anagha Deshmukh lost her mother three years ago, she felt a deep chasm between grief and day-to-day life.
There is a saying that “words are not enough to express the unconditional love that exists between mother and daughter.”
When Anagha Deshmukh lost her mother three years ago, she felt a deep chasm between grief and day-to-day life. Even though she is an engineer and works in marketing, she picked up a paintbrush and discovered her natural talent for art.
Photo: Tate Carlson
“It was something that was buried, something I even didn’t know that I had. I started painting and it just started taking off,” Deshmukh says. Then her mother fell ill.
“Painting changed my life. It helped me stand up again.” To keep moving forward, Deshmukh decided to only paint things that make her happy. Her work focuses on bright and bold colors.
“I’m taking that emotion of grief and turning it into something of happiness. When everybody walks into the room they should feel happiness, vibrance, that mystique. A painting should talk to them and cheer them up.”
Her newest experiment is seascapes. Deshmukh uses acrylics and different techniques to make her picturesque seascapes. She also uses chemicals to enhance flow and create patterns. The result is a breathtaking painting that captures the way the light hits the surface of the water. It’s almost like staring at a photograph of the ocean surface.
“It was the colors and the pattern that caught my eye,” says Jim Lucas, who placed a blue seascape in his hallway. He also hung two of Deshmukh’s animal paintings in his sons’ bedrooms. As for the seascape, it spoke to him. “That one was a combination of light and a water pattern. It was very calming,” he says.
Deshmukh’s magical transformations from mind to canvas come to life in her Edina home, which has two studios. She signs her work, “AnDe,” a thoughtful collaboration of her first and last names.
Since her art is a labor of love and devotion to herself and the memory of her mother, she doesn’t take any profit from her endeavors.
“I believe giving back to the community is as critical as providing to your family,” she says. Deshmukh donates all proceeds to her father’s charity called Goodwill India, an organization that feeds meals to underprivileged students, supports orphans and women in education.
Anagha Deshmukh
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