Jammu: Irtiza Firdous, a 19-year-old young and energetic teenager is a painting artist.
Irtiza hails from Madinah Colony Malla bagh has completed her higher education from R.P. School and her higher secondary education from Crescent Public School and is currently pursuing B. A. Honours in Govt. College for Women, M. A. Road Srinagar.
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As per her, when she was a kid she loved to draw and paint but after some years she took a break from all this till class 10th. But everything changed post class 10th board exams.
She says, “I was preparing my board exams when I felt so much of pressure and was going through frequent anxiety and felt the need to open up. So I took brushes of my little cousin which were lying by my side and began painting. Once I was done I felt relieved and thereby thought of never leaving it. ”
Initially, she only painted but soon she took up with calligraphy as well. She has tried her hands on landscape, abstract paintings and also on calligraphy (in English, Urdu & Arabic)
She says that her friends usually used to approach her with appreciation and used to ask her to make customized orders for them and thereby she came with the idea of selling online. She started in 2018 by creating an Instagram handle under the name the art gallery (@theartgallery) kept her identity confidential where she sells customized paintings, calligraphy, craft-based items like wishing cards for birthday and anniversary and bookmarks and much more. It has been more than 2 years now and is successfully running.
She also says that no one has as such influenced her as art comes from within and what comes from within (soul) needs no influencer. However, she strongly says that her mother and the rest of the family are her support system without whom she doesn’t feel she could handle so much. She says that it becomes a little difficult to handle studies and business along but the taste of life is in struggling hard. She says that during school or College she never wasted her free class rather would study in school as per her work schedule and managed everything simultaneously.
Although commons have always showered love on her work but it becomes momentous when the professors of fine arts praised her work.
She says that Kashmir has finely talented young artists who need to be recognised and if she gets a chance she would definitely work for them.
She says, “one thing that I would like to improve in myself is to be a little quick as sometimes I lag and due to which orders pile up and hence create stress for me.”
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As per her, the art gallery is not only a concept of selling customized products but also creating a platform for Kashmiri artists which she has been working on already. She has held workshops via it which benefits the other young artists as well in Kashmir. She wants to hold an exhibition in the coming year 2021 and also wants to make links for Kashmiri artists to the rest of the world.
#LifeStory is a project conceived and run by The Dispatch to re-introduce the story of the people of Jammu and Kashmir through individual achievements attained by way of institutional engagements. #LifeStory is conceived as an endless series focused at introducing people to each other, and to the world, through the stories of their achievements –the achievements for them as individuals, for their local communities, regions, Jammu and Kashmir and the country.
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