Heart Beat in Brushstrokes, a large gold abstract oil painting by Ritu Raj (oil on canvas, 6 × 6 ft)

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Abstract Inquiry · 2021

Heart Beat in Brushstrokes

6 × 6 ft · Oil on canvas · 2021

In a private collection

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The painting made from a pulse — brushstrokes as the visible rhythm of something alive, the canvas as cardiogram.

Heart Beat (2021) is the rhythmic core of my Pulse of Life Collection — a 72 x 72 inch acrylic painting that explores repetition, vibration, and vitality. It’s a visual echo of life’s most essential force: the beat within us, constant yet ever-changing.

Rendered in waves of crimson, deep burgundy, and intervals of bright white, Heart Beat pulses across the canvas with undulating forms and staccato marks. The work is not illustrative. It doesn’t show a heart — it feels like one. It’s pressure and pause. Expansion and contraction.

The surface is built up like sound: each layer amplifies or dampens the one before it. Vertical lines clash with diagonal sweeps. There's a sense of rhythm struggling to stay consistent, like breath caught in uncertainty. It captures the emotional pulse of its time — the invisible but undeniable tempo of survival, connection, and stress.

The painting resonates with the sensorial intensity of Bridget Riley, known for her optical explorations of movement and frequency. Like Riley, I use repetition to evoke sensation — but my lines falter, bleed, and blur. This is not perfection. This is heartbeat.

Heart Beat is both universal and intimate. It speaks to the biological and the emotional, the physiological and the spiritual. In a world driven by noise, this painting asks you to slow down — to tune in. Not to the world outside, but the pulse within.

Where to see it. In person at RituStudio, Phoenix, by appointment. Represented by Jarrow & Goodman, Los Angeles.

The space it needs

Wall
At least 8 ft wide
Ceiling
9 ft or more
Light
Natural light preferred — oil layers shift through the day
Daylight
Gold strokes over a charcoal ground; side light from a window brings the brushwork up into a visible rhythm. Keep it out of hard western sun, which warms the gold and flattens the dark.

Lives best in

Living room 5/5

Heart Beat in Brushstrokes earns its place here: the six-foot square of dark gloss, charcoal, and gold pulls the room into a shared pulse without demanding silence or formality.

Hotel lobby 4/5

The gold catch and layered oil surface reward the glancing eye of a lobby, though the work's insistence on inward attention is slightly wasted on a space built for transit.

Details

Size
6 × 6 ft (W × H)
Medium
Oil on canvas
Year
2021
Collection
Abstract Inquiry
Palette
Dark Gloss · Charcoal Gray · Gold
Weight
About 45 lb

Its ArtGram

ArtGram.Frond

  • Texture4
  • Form3
  • Colour range3
  • Palette4.9
  • Contrast3.7
  • Abstraction Quotient1.5
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