Pavni Diwanji

 

Pavni Diwanji is a contemporary visual artist whose work explores memory, emotional residue, and the interior landscapes of lived experience. Working primarily with pastels and charcoal, she creates expressive compositions that balance bold color with restraint, translating moments of connection, stillness, and transition into distilled visual form.



Diwanji’s engagement with art began early in Ahmedabad where she grew up. She started painting with watercolors at the age of four and, through her school years, trained under artist and educator Avantika Jetli, developing a strong foundation in observation, discipline, and sensitivity to color. This early grounding continues to inform her intuitive yet structured approach to creating art.



Before turning her full focus to art, Diwanji built a distinguished career in technology. With a master’s degree in Computer Science from Stanford University, she contributed to foundational web technologies such as Java and later held senior executive leadership roles at Silicon Valley companies including Google and Instagram. This background in analytical thinking and systems design informs her artistic practice, shaping a sustained dialogue between structure and intuition.


Diwanji maintains her Artaye studio in Santa Cruz, California, and practices within the Santa Cruz Art League collective. Earlier bodies of work, including *Ebb & Flow*, explored cycles of emptiness, renewal, and transformation, and were presented at Open Studios 2023 and 2024. 
Her exhibition at Gufa, રંગબેરંગી, translates to Colorful and brings together pastel works created over several years.  For the artist, the exhibition resonates as a homecoming—a return to the origins of her artistic language and a culmination of her sustained exploration of color, memory, and emotion.