- [Shruti] Art has given me a lot of freedom.
I can do things a different way and it's okay.
Art has no bounds.
Art has freedom.
It's my school pictures, oh my God.
I was about 12 years old when I started the journey of art.
The reason I keep saying journey because,
I feel like you know there's always
place to learn and explore more.
My mom realized that I really had a talent for this
and so she found a great art guru, Mrs. Avantika Jetli.
She introduced me to different styles,
such as Madhubani style, the Gond style,
the worldly style of paintings.
And these are like regional tribal arts.
She was just really generous.
I would go and on weekends I would stay with her
free sometimes all day.
Those kinds of things I learned from her
that I don't think I would ever learn anywhere.
Those small little, you know, techniques.
I grew up speaking English and learning English,
but then I came here,
the language is different.
Envelope for example, we call it cover.
(laughs)
It just have to have good sense of humor.
I had to learn a lot after I came here in the sense like,
going to find the canvas,
if you go to Hobby Lobby or jellies are drama
there's so much material out there.
So I had to really educate myself.
There was a lot trial and error in the beginning.
One time I just had this thought of painting.
Like you know how my mom would sit
and do my hair and brush my hair.
And then I was thinking the background
and said no I will do something different
and something that's not expected.
I mixed some abstract and some realism there,
and some people saw that and they loved that painting.
So since then,
I've been trying to incorporate the Indian style
with the European style.
I'm not taking away from the traditional styles,
it just mixing them.
They can work well together.
I'm also giving space to the regional art styles
to become more in the known,
because people don't know about it.
Okay,
are you all ready?
NO I had never been visualize myself as a teacher,
but one of my friends asked me
if I can just have a session you know.
So this is what we are gonna do,
we're gonna put random drops of alcohol ink on the canvas.
This is my fourth semester teaching.
I teach Indian style and European style.
Yeah, you need that yellow remember.
It brought back so many memories from my childhood.
Like how would my teacher teaching me
if I'm not understanding something.
I'm also going to send you something
for the right hand okay.
Well now when I'm painting,
I think about if I'm teaching the same technique,
what I'm doing right now to my students.
Time I gonna tell them how to create something.
Then I seeing some of my students
they're afraid of messing up.
They're still, I don't know mess up my painting.
My first reaction will be,
you'll never mess up your painting.
This is a funny thing about art, experimenting.
And sometimes when you make mistakes actually
you might create something really cool.
The green shade is amazing.
It's pretty amazing that
they're creating their own compositions.
If I'm teaching a new style,
they'll take that painting,
they'll add their own element to that.
It's like they're creating their own niche,
you know, own style.
So that's really gratifying.
I would like to start a new painting next week.
I think my art has definitely given me
that the power of you can create and there are no bonds.
If you don't try something, you'll never create something.
(upbeat music)