Puneeta Ranjan

Puneeta Ranjan, is a full-time, self-taught artist whose practice is shaped by more than 15 years of dedicated work and an unconventional journey from a foundation in finance to the world of visual art. This transition has deeply informed her approach—merging creative intuition with discipline, structure, and sustained commitment. Her works are marked by a strong sense of purpose, reflecting a balance between expressive freedom and methodical practice, and demonstrating how rigor from one field can meaningfully enrich another. Rooted in a desire to expand artistic expression and engage diverse audiences, Puneeta’s practice extends beyond the studio into the public realm.

In 2022, she led and painted a 500-metre-long street art project at Nyati County in Pune, collaborating with volunteers to transform shared urban space into a site of collective creativity. Alongside this landmark project, she has executed numerous street art interventions across different parts of Pune, positioning art as an accessible and participatory experience. In January 2023, Puneeta completed one of Pune’s most ambitious public art projects—The Wonderwall, one of the biggest and longest wall artworks in the city, located opposite Vibgyor School, NIBM.

Beyond her practice as an artist, Puneeta is an active cultural contributor and educator. She has served as a guest speaker on platforms such as Radio City FM and at the All India Conference of School Excellence Awards (Pune, 2017), where she shared insights on creativity, education, and artistic growth. Her expertise is widely recognized, leading to her role as a judge for numerous inter-school, city-level, and state-level art competitions, including those hosted by DPS and other institutions.

Puneeta Ranjan’s practice is further enriched by her commitment to learning and exchange through art workshops and open studio sessions with children and corporate groups across Pune. These initiatives reflect her belief in art as a transformative, inclusive, and dialogic process. Through exhibitions, collaborations, public artworks, and educational engagement, she continues to contribute meaningfully to Pune’s cultural landscape while expanding the possibilities of contemporary artistic practice.

The Neoteric: Seeds recure throughout your work as symbols of continuity and transformation. What draws you to seed forms as visual anchors, and how do they help you explore concepts of memory, ancestry, and the
cyclical nature of time?

The Neoteric : Seeds recure throughout your work as symbols of continuity and transformation. What draws you to seed forms as visual anchors, and how do they help you explore concepts of memory, ancestry, and the cyclical nature of time?

Puneeta: Seeds portray a silent will to transform. In studying seeds, we begin to understand that growth is not always visible. Much of what defines life happens beneath the surface. Within their compact unassuming forms lies a quiet intelligence, preserving ancestry, responding to conditions and transforming when the time is right. This resonates with me. Seed forms let me express memory not as nostalgia but as something still alive, something which is continuous, something which is history as well as the future.

The Neoteric: Your mixed-media process is deliberate, sensorial, and layered. Could you describe how slowness, tactility, and materiality shape the emotional tone of your work? What does working “slow” make possible for you that speed cannot?

Puneeta: Working slow helps me shape the emotional tone of my work. Working slow makes me feel it more, so it becomes more about feeling than performing. It brings depth to my art, a presence where each gesture and brush stroke is intentional yet natural, like meditation. Slowness allows observation around me, taking time to build up my art in layers, allowing drying time in between and also critically analyzing for any errors, most of the times even changing directions of where my art is leading to, the process becomes the end in itself and it is in this process that I find true Joy! 

The Neoteric: You describe nature as your earliest teacher—a presence that shaped your emotional, sensory, and spiritual development. How does this foundational relationship guide the decisions you make in your
current studio practice?

Puneeta: Creating today means creating with responsibility. Landscapes have a political feeling right now because of the climate emergency we are living in. It’s a very contemporary issue. Propagating awareness for action to help preserve our Mother Nature by appreciating the existing beauty around us is the underlying reason why I make art. My art traces the quiet relationship between loss and renewal in the natural world. Through fragile materials, abstraction and poetic mark-making, I explore the shared vulnerability of the planet and the human heart – not as a warning, but as a gesture of care and remembrance. Artists pay attention where others do not. We notice the thinning tree cover, the silence where the birdsong was once livid, the change in pattern of rain, the fog … We are aware and witness “This is happening and I am paying attention to it.“ And we make art that create unease and realization to wake up the the sleeping parts of our conscience. We also imagine alternatives, repair, coexistence, rebuilding wonder, belongingness and a connect with the natural world so that we are compelled to protect it. And that we are made of the same things as trees, the oceans and the stars .We see the world as it is but also as it could be, if only we believe in kindness, love and a little bit of magic.

The Neoteric: You have created murals and interventions in neglected or garbage-filled urban spaces. What does it mean to transform these environments through art, and how does public space expand or challenge your visual language?

Puneeta: Creating art for public spaces carries so much responsibility along with so much excitement. The power of public art is that it goes to people’s daily lives to be seen, to be felt, to inspire ! Especially if we are transforming dirty chronic garbage prone spots into beautiful walls, i take pride in that! My street art carry messages that could be a tiny inspiration for people passing by. I want a little magic of art to rub off on any one passing by. I strongly believe that art should be free for all to view, it should belong to the public and not only to private collectors, galleries and museums. Art has the power to change the world. There are challenges of course in making street art, the one very common thing I face is vandalism, defacing the art. Writing over it … etc. I take that as a part of the process and am not discouraged. Apathy from people and authorities is something to worry about as people despite beautifying the area attempt throwing garbage, even the local government do nothing to prevent it. 

The Neoteric: Although your professional beginnings were in finance, you have sustained an art practice for over twenty years. What inner convictions or turning points allowed you to choose the path of a self-taught artist with such consistency?

Puneeta: It is my love for art that keeps me going! Although I was very good with numbers i always wanted to express myself differently through shapes and colours and I had my first art exhibit when I was in Grade Nine. I was making art even while I was pursuing my career in finance. The turning point came when I got married to an architect who influenced me greatly to pursue my passion. It was a bold move and I worked very hard to develop my skills in art and get better as time went, the learning is going on. My family is my support and my strength. 

The Neoteric: Your work carries traces of every city you’ve lived in. How have Delhi’s intensity, Chandigarh’s geometry, or Pune’s ecology filtered into your evolving visual vocabulary? What does “place” contribute to your creative process?

Puneeta: Pune has beautiful skies and big banyan trees and lovely birds! It has inspired me to express myself in abstracts. Chandigarh was more about Indian festivals, colorful and richness of Punjab and that influenced my portraits and landscapes. Delhi was experimental and I was there when my kids were very small so a lot of art that I made there was about my own children. Place in my creative process is about memory, abstracts to give form to the intangible feeling of care-free young days… 

The Neoteric: You have mentored children and led workshops across schools, malls, and community spaces. How has teaching shaped you as an artist? And what have young people taught you about looking, creating, or imagining?

The Neoteric: You have mentored children and led workshops across schools, malls, and community spaces. How has teaching shaped you as an artist? And what have young people taught you about looking, creating,
or imagining?

Puneeta: Imagination knows no bounds when it comes to kids. Their wild ideas, spontaneity, questioning everything and their what ifs have been a strong influence on my art. I don’t fear experimenting, being bold with my lines and strokes and expressing without judgement and most of all, having fun making art. The process becomes the end in itself. 

The Neoteric: From the scent of Albizia trees to hours spent under Ashoka branches, your practice is filled with powerful sensory memories. Is there one memory from your childhood garden that continues to guide or haunt your work today?

Puneeta: I recall vividly a most tranquil evening spent in a Buddhist monastery many years back in my hometown. Rows of lit candles, fragrance of subtle incense and distant music of monks chanting prayers… Some other vivid childhood memories that come alive in my thoughts are ..the rustle of ashoka leaves on a windy day, collecting seed pods of the huge albizia tree in my school early morning.

The scale and visibility of Puneeta Ranjan’s practice underscore her commitment to public art as a tool for cultural engagement and urban storytelling. Equally significant is her work with communities, including a wall art project at a Pune orphanage, created in collaboration with the children themselves, emphasizing art as a means of empowerment and shared authorship.

(c) 2026