Painter Ritu Raj Publishes The Shape of Seeing: The Genesis of Abstraction

Part memoir, part meditation: essays on time, shadow, color and silence for anyone who has felt something before an abstract painting and couldn’t name it. (

PHOENIX, AZ, UNITED STATES, October 3, 2026 /EINPresswire.com/ — Phoenix painter Ritu Raj has published The Shape of Seeing: The Genesis of Abstraction (American Real Publishing), a collection of short essays on time, geometry, shadow and breath, and on what happens between a person and an abstract canvas.

Raj wrote the book over two decades of asking questions, reflecting and returning to the canvas he first knew as a child in New Delhi. There he grew up among the painters his father, the art critic K.B. Goel, wrote about. The book follows that return. It treats painting as a discipline of attention, and seeing as something that can be practiced.

“To paint is to live in the eternal moment where matter becomes light and seeing becomes being,” Raj writes.

Across the essays, Raj explores:

how the way we see turns into what we create;
how paint and pigment become something closer to spirit;
why abstraction can say things about being human that realism can’t;
how color, line and silence work as a language of their own.

The book is written for painters and collectors. It is equally for anyone who has stood in front of an abstract painting, felt something and could not find the words. The cover carries Raj’s own painting Orbit of Blue.

Raj paints at RituStudio, his studio in Phoenix, in two bodies of work. In Organic Movement, thread replaces the brush and gravity completes the mark. Abstract Inquiry is slower work in oil and acrylic. He is represented by Jarrow & Goodman, Los Angeles.

Book details The Shape of Seeing: The Genesis of Abstraction by Ritu Raj. American Real Publishing, Binghamton, NY, 2026. Hardcover ISBN 978-1-969063-72-5; paperback ISBN 978-1-969063-71-8; also on Kindle. Available on Amazon. More at rituart.com/the-shape-of-seeing-book.

About Ritu Raj Ritu Raj is an American painter, author and entrepreneur based in Phoenix, Arizona. He is the creator of ArtGraph and the Taxonomy of Abstraction, a proposed language for abstract painting, at artgraph.co. His companies include Wag Hotels, SideCar and Diamond Foundry. His second book, The Unalgorithmic Self: Preserving the Human Soul in the Age of Artificial Intelligence, was published on September 29, 2026. His paintings and writing are at rituart.com; his books are on his Amazon author page.

Media contact Ritu Raj RituStudio, Phoenix, Arizona ritu@rituart.com +1 415-876-7000 Instagram: @ritu.us · X: @ritu rituart.com · artgraph.co

Ritu Raj
Ritu Raj
+1 415-876-7000
ritu@rituart.com
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