I was 5 years old when I found my passion for drawing. I remember my grandfather had given me my first box of crayons and drawing book for my birthday when I began creating figures and images. I began drawing horses, comic figures, landscapes, and wildlife – something very different from the other 5 year old girls I played with who always drew houses with stick figures around it. I drew and colored, being careful with the details of shading and staying in the lines. Everyone admired my ingeniousness and the talent I had since left them astounded.
Drawing and painting became a hobby of mine through my teenage years, and I preferred Art classes over the other subjects I took in high school. As I graduated from high school, my parents forced me to join an engineering program in any university, but - the stubborn adolescent I was - I went on to Arts schools and majored in Fine Arts from NYU. With the innate skill I had, my university offered me a scholarship to study in Paris. I studied arts further then from Parsons Paris School of Art and Design.
After completing my 2-year degree in Paris, I returned to New York. When you haven’t yet established your name in the art world, you are still considered an amateur and you earn a negligible amount of money. I was confident with my work and my strong background in arts, and I knew I would begin earning in heaps very soon. But it took me nearly 6 years to get my work displayed in an art gallery. My first exhibition was with a mixed group of amateur and professional artists. I remember, I sold my first painting on the first day and made a grand. After another two art exhibitions, my name began emerging in the ‘professional artists’ group.
I am currently a well-established artist in New York and have I been holding solo exhibitions at least three times a year. My income is $80,000 a year – that’s at least 20 times what I was making when I was an amateur!