Born in New Delhi in 1968, Chandrika Marla earned a degree in Fashion Design from the National Institute of Fashion Technology. She immigrated  to the United States at the age of thirty. Since 2008, she has invested herself in art, drawing on abstract color fields as a way to explore her own emotional and creative landscape. 

She is currently a resident artist at Cubberley Studios in Palo Alto, California. Her work has been exhibited at The de Young Museum (California), Queens Museum of Art (New York), Museum of the Shenandoah Valley (Virginia), and the Rockford Art Museum (Illinois). At a performance in Chicago in 2011, her paintings were interpreted by Rama Vaidyanathan – a leading exponent of Bharatanatyam dance.