Pooja Pittie

b. 1977

Pooja Pittie is a visual artist who lives and works in Chicago. Born and raised in Mumbai, India, she trained as an Accountant and moved to the U.S. in 1999.

An MBA from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business led her to a career in Finance and Entrepreneurship. In 2016, she decided to pursue her lifelong passion for art and made a career change to focus on painting full-time. Pooja has an incurable and progressive form of muscular dystrophy and her studio practice is a struggle for balance between a slow-moving body and an active mind.

Pooja Pittie’s practice as a painter is both rock solid and ever-shifting. Her paintings are populated by a swirling cast of characters that inhabit a colorful, secret world of mind-bending activity. While the artist’s disability restricts her physical movement there seems to be an inverse product of unbounded, inner vibrancy which radiates from her brush onto the canvas. She lives a rich life of the mind which any visit to her studio confirms at a glance of her well-stocked bookshelf, and the poignant titles of her paintings seal the deal on each finished work. Pooja might labor, layer by layer, dot by dot, over a canvas one day and then resolve a new painting in a two-hour burst of brushy energy the next. The muse comes and she follows it down the rabbit hole, wherever it may lead.

Pooja has completed the HATCH residency at Chicago Artists' Coalition and the Center Program at Hyde Park Art Center. She participated in the Lighthouses on the Mag Mile project in 2018 and has been awarded a contract by the Illinois Capital Development Board's Art-in-Architecture Program to create multiple pieces of public art for Triton College in River Grove, IL.

In November of 2022 she was awarded the prestigious 3Arts Next Level/Spare Room award of $50,000.

Watch a Vimeo (https://vimeo.com/528105070) about Pooja and the process behind her work

Watch a Vimeo of Pooja in conversation with author Megha Ralpati at her 2021 solo exhibition (https://vimeo.com/643105604)

Pooja Pittie (b. 1977)
Under the Red Moon, 2024
acrylic on canvas
50 x 40 inches
signed, dated and titled verso
#13686
Pooja Pittie (b. 1977)
If There Were Another World, 2024
acrylic on canvas
60 x 48 inches
signed, dated and titled verso
#13685
Pooja Pittie (b. 1977)
Under the Red Moon, 2024
acrylic on canvas
50 x 40 inches
signed, dated and titled verso
#13686
Pooja Pittie (b. 1977)
If There Were Another World, 2024
acrylic on canvas
60 x 48 inches
signed, dated and titled verso
#13685
Pooja Pittie (b. 1977)
Nowhere to Hide, 2024
acrylic on canvas
40 x 40 inches
signed, dated and titled verso
#13684
Pooja Pittie (b. 1977)
This Must be the Way, 2024
acrylic on canvas
40 x 40 inches
signed, dated and titled verso
#13622
Pooja Pittie (b. 1977)
Only in Dark the Light, 2024
acrylic on canvas
54 x 54 inches
signed, dated and titled verso
#13620
Pooja Pittie (b. 1977)
Coming Home at Twilight, 2023
acrylic on canvas
36 x 48 inches
signed, dated and titled verso
#13621
Pooja Pittie (b. 1977)
Unfolding Reality, 2024
acrylic on canvas
28 x 22 inches
signed, dated and titled verso
#13624
Pooja Pittie (b. 1977)
Gathering Stillness, 2023
acrylic on canvas
28 x 22 inches
signed, dated and titled verso
#13623
Pooja Pittie (b. 1977)
I Thought I'd Find You Here, 2024
acrylic on canvas
54 x 54 inches
signed, dated and titled verso
#13619
Pooja Pittie (b. 1977)
Be in Softness, 2024
Hand-knitted and crocheted vessels, mixed fibers, hidden notes written by the artist to herself
#13709
Pooja Pittie (b. 1977)
Unforgotten, 2024
hand knitted and crocheted objects, mixed fibers
#13708
Pooja Pittie (b. 1977)
Waiting - A Self Portrait, 2023
Forty-six handknitted ropes of mixed fibers denoting the artist’s age, each rope approximating the length of the artist’s body, woven into metal grid panel
#13707
Pooja Pittie (b. 1977)
From What is Before, 2023
acrylic on canvas
48 x 36 inches
signed, dated and titled verso
#13609
Pooja Pittie (b. 1977)
Some Speak of the Future, 2023
acrylic on canvas
40 x 30 inches
signed, dated and titled verso
#13541
Pooja Pittie (b. 1977)
A Half-Remembered Dream, 2023
acrylic on canvas
48 x 36 inches
signed, dated and titled verso
#13616
Pooja Pittie (b. 1977)
A Way Between Voice and Presence, 2024
acrylic on canvas
60 x 48 inches
signed, dated and titled verso
#13706
Pooja Pittie (b. 1977)
Recovering Traces of the Past, 2023
acrylic on canvas
40 x 30 inches
signed, dated and titled verso
#13540
Pooja Pittie (b. 1977)
Still Believing, 2023
acrylic on canvas
40 x 40 inches
signed, dated and titled verso
#13545
Pooja Pittie (b. 1977)
Wanting to Know Reason, 2023
acrylic on canvas
40 x 40 inches
signed, dated and titled verso
#13546
Pooja Pittie (b. 1977)
Dreamlife, 2023
acrylic on canvas
50 x 40 inches
signed, titled and dated verso
#13497
Pooja Pittie (b. 1977)
From Within, 2022
acrylic on canvas
48 x 36 inches
signed, dated and titled verso
#13268
Pooja Pittie (b. 1977)
Untitled, 2023
watercolor on paper
11 5/8 x 8 1/2 inches
signed and dated verso
#13594
Pooja Pittie (b. 1977)
Untitled, 2023
watercolor on paper
11 5/8 x 8 1/2 inches
signed and dated verso
#13593