Passion for colours, people

Every one of us has a talent within. The same can be said of Seemita Roy, a full-time mother who has a passion for art and helping people discover the artist in them.

A resident of Dubai for the last 15 years, she decided it was time to impart her knowledge and thought of her friends first. Her love for art began at the age of four and it was encouraged and further developed by the famous Bikash Bhattacharjee in India. Her friends would request her to enrich the entrances of their homes in Dubai and other places with her artwork and with that encouragement she started teaching ladies and children who showed an interest and appreciation for art.

"Art is an innate thing which you won't know till you don't do it," says Roy. " Children are eager to learn and if they start at an early age with the right encouragement they can enhance their artistic talents greatly."

Her choice of colours are the bright and vibrant tones, like Indian red, yellow ochre, cadmium orange, cobalt blue, meridian green, to name a few. Her favourite medium is oil.

"I love doing oil paintings, I feel it is in my system," claims Roy. However, she also does soft pastels, charcoal, acrylic and watercolours. Roy encourages children to try their hand at all sorts of mediums and find what they are comfortable with after they have experimented. With ladies it is different, she says.

"Women come to me with the aim of decorating their walls with paintings done by them," she says. "They often choose large canvases as opposed to sketchpad and watercolour paper. I often have mothers and their children learning at the same time, painting similar themes."

She adds. "I recently had a 70-year-old woman expressing an interest in painting. She had never painted in her life and now she does beautiful pictures."

Roy paints landscapes and flowers but her inspiration comes from people. She photographs them and uses part of their characteristics on her paintings. Her choice of form at the moment is women and faces. She hopes to exhibit some time in the future but for now her home is her gallery and she is content with what she is doing.