Life, Values & Legacy: Our Chat with Ritu Raj of Phoenix

Ritu Raj shared their story and experiences with us recently and you can find our conversation below.

Ritu, really appreciate you sharing your stories and insights with us. The world would have so much more understanding and empathy if we all were a bit more open about our stories and how they have helped shaped our journey and worldview. Let’s jump in with a fun one: What’s more important to you—intelligence, energy, or integrity?
Integrity, without question. Intelligence and energy are both vital—they fuel creativity, drive experimentation, and sustain the discipline required to make art. But integrity shapes purpose. It ensures that what I create or pursue remains authentic and aligned with my values. In art, integrity means staying true to one’s vision, even when it’s uncomfortable, misunderstood, or commercially inconvenient. It’s about creating work that reflects honesty rather than strategy, depth rather than decoration.

Intelligence helps me think through form and structure; energy keeps me exploring new materials and ideas. Yet integrity binds them, giving coherence and soul to my process. Whether in business or art, I’ve learned that intelligence and energy without integrity lead to noise—activity without meaning. With integrity, even stillness has value; even uncertainty feels like progress.

Can you briefly introduce yourself and share what makes you or your brand unique?
I’m Ritu Raj, an artist whose journey began in childhood, paused for decades while I built a career in business and technology, and then reignited during the pandemic. That return to painting became a rediscovery of imagination, discipline, and joy—a second life of sorts. My work explores abstraction as a language of emotion and memory, where color, geometry, and gesture intersect to express the invisible patterns that shape human experience.

Having grown up surrounded by India’s modernist painters and later immersed in Silicon Valley’s innovation culture, my art fuses two worlds—intuition and structure, chaos and clarity. I paint using both traditional techniques and unconventional tools like CNC-milled wood and string in place of brushes, developing a unique visual texture that bridges craft and technology.

My studio, Exploring Abstraction, is both a personal and creative philosophy—an inquiry into perception, time, and transformation. Currently, I’m working on my 2025 Pop Art Collection, which experiments with bold colors, contemporary icons, and cultural fragments reimagined through abstraction. For me, art is not just an outcome but an evolving dialogue between thought, emotion, and material.

Okay, so here’s a deep one: Who were you before the world told you who you had to be?
I was a curious child who saw patterns in everything—the cracks in a wall, the movement of clouds, the rhythm of people’s voices. I spent hours drawing, building small worlds out of imagination and instinct, long before I had words like “composition” or “aesthetics.” I wasn’t trying to be anything then; I was simply observing, translating, and making.
Before the world introduced expectations and labels, I was an explorer of form and feeling. I believed that creativity was as natural as breathing. Over time, education, career, and success defined who I was supposed to be—but that quiet, observant child never disappeared. Returning to art allowed me to find him again, to honor that early self who believed in wonder, curiosity, and the freedom to see differently.

What have been the defining wounds of your life—and how have you healed them?
The deepest wounds in my life have come from separation—from self, from creativity, and from the people who shaped me most deeply. For many years, while building a career in business and technology, I drifted away from my creative center. The world encouraged achievement and logic, but in doing so, I quieted the intuitive voice that once guided me. That distance from art became a silent wound—an emptiness that success couldn’t fill.
The most personal wound, though, was losing my father, who was my greatest intellectual and emotional influence. He was a visionary art critic whose insights shaped how I see the world. His passing left both an ache and a responsibility—to carry forward the spirit of inquiry and integrity he embodied. Now, as my mother faces stage 4 cancer with extraordinary grace at 88, I am reminded daily of the fragility and resilience of life.
Art has been my way of healing. It reconnects me to the parts of myself that were muted by time and circumstance. Through painting, I’ve found a way to transform grief, love, and memory into color and form—to turn wounds into beauty, and pain into meaning.

Sure, so let’s go deeper into your values and how you think. What would your closest friends say really matters to you?
My closest friends would probably say that what matters most to me is authenticity—living, thinking, and creating in a way that feels true. They know I care deeply about integrity in expression, whether in art, relationships, or conversation. I’m drawn to honesty, even when it’s uncomfortable, because that’s where real connection begins.
They’d also say I value curiosity—that restless desire to explore new ideas, mediums, and perspectives. For me, curiosity is both a creative engine and a spiritual compass; it keeps life alive, textured, and open.
And finally, they’d tell you that I care about beauty and meaning—not in a decorative sense, but as ways of understanding the world. I believe beauty is an act of attention, and meaning emerges when we truly see. Whether through art, friendship, or reflection, what matters to me is staying awake to life—its fragility, its contradictions, and its wonder.

Okay, so let’s keep going with one more question that means a lot to us: What is the story you hope people tell about you when you’re gone?
I hope people say that I had the courage to begin again—that I didn’t let success in one world prevent me from seeking truth in another. That after years of being an entrepreneur and executive, I chose to listen to the quiet voice I’d once silenced, the one that spoke in color, form, and feeling.

I’d like to be remembered as someone who lived with curiosity and integrity, who valued imagination as much as intellect. That I built companies with purpose, but ultimately chose to build a life around meaning.

If there’s a story to tell, I hope it’s one of transformation—the idea that it’s never too late to return to what makes you feel alive. That reinvention isn’t about abandoning the past but integrating it, turning experience into art and ambition into awareness. I hope people say I proved that creativity is not a luxury; it’s a way of being fully human.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.rituart.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ritu.us/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rituraj/
• Twitter: https://x.com/ritu
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ritu.raj
• Other: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ritu_Raj

Image Credits
All pictures taken by me of my paintings, Ritu Raj