— Books by Ritu Raj
Two books,
one inquiry.
One asks how abstraction arrives. The other asks what no algorithm can reach. Both come from the studio, from the same question a painter asks every morning in front of a blank canvas: what is actually happening when a person sees?
Essays · September 2026
The Shape of Seeing
The Genesis of Abstraction
Twenty short essays on time, geometry, shadow and breath, and on what happens between a person and an abstract canvas. Part memoir, part meditation, for anyone who has felt something before a painting and could not find the words.
About the book →ISBN 978-1-969063-71-8 (paperback) · 978-1-969063-72-5 (hardcover)
Philosophy · September 2026
The Unalgorithmic Self
Art, AI, and the Future of Human Thinking
Thirty chapters on the body, emotion, memory, imagination, identity, love, ethics and art: the part of a life that has an inside. Not a book against AI. A book about remembering ourselves, written openly in conversation with one.
About the book →ISBN 979-8-90447-029-6 (paperback) · 979-8-90447-030-2 (hardcover)
The Shape of Seeing asks
What happens between a person and a painting that cannot be put into words?
The Unalgorithmic Self asks
What in a person cannot be extracted, predicted or reproduced?
Read together, they make one argument from two sides: that the most human thing we do is pay attention, and that attention is the one thing no system can do on our behalf.
— About the author
Ritu Raj: painter, author, builder.
Ritu Raj is an abstract painter, author and entrepreneur. He works from RituStudio in Phoenix, Arizona, where his signature technique, Organic Movement, lets thread take the place of the brush and makes gravity a collaborator. He has made more than 250 paintings and is represented by Jarrow & Goodman in Los Angeles.
He grew up in New Delhi among the painters his father, the art critic K.B. Goel, wrote about. Mathematics and computer science gave him another grammar for the same question, and three decades of founding and building companies, among them Avasta, SideCar, Wag Hotels and Diamond Foundry, tested it at scale.
The painting, the systems and ArtGraph, his language for abstract art, are one inquiry. The two books are where that inquiry is written down.
The artist, shows and exhibitions The paintings ArtGraph Ritu Raj on Amazon
— Press, podcasts and events
Talk with the author.
For interviews, podcasts, book talks, review copies and studio visits. Bio, photographs, covers and the fact sheet are in the press kit.
Booksellers and libraries: both books are available through Ingram at standard trade terms.