Pratima Rao is a local artist from Holmdel, New Jersey. A longtime Monmouth County resident, she loves to paint local landscapes “en plein air” or “in the open air” in oil, exploring the effects of light while dealing with the challenges of painting outdoors. She feels that Plein Air paintings have a vitality of their own because they capture the feeling of the scene quickly, with the atmosphere conveyed through color notes that would otherwise be impossible to capture. She also does studio paintings in oil from photographs taken by her.
Pratima is an engineer by profession and worked with AT&T in Holmdel and Middletown, NJ, for the last 20 years while also raising two children. Despite a hectic schedule, she pursued her passion for painting and took classes and workshops whenever she could. She recently decided to leave AT&T to paint full time and couldn’t be happier with her decision!
Pratima has been showing her work as an associate member at the Guild of Creative Art in Shrewsbury since 2000 and as an exhibiting member since 2007. She is also a member of the Plein Air Painters of the Jersey Coast (PAPJC) and an associate member of the Oil Painters of America (OPA).