I always knew I was going to be an artist when growing up around my family’s textile business. I was designing textile patterns by ten years old and quickly discovered a career in art. Even though I was born in Karachi, Pakistan in the mid-50s, the great pop artists of the 1960s – Peter Max, Andy Warhol and Claes Oldenburg, among others had profound influences on me.

After coming to the United States at 16, I received a Bachelor of Fine Arts at Middle Tennessee State University (MTSU). A  career in advertising and graphic design followed in Nashville, TN, during which time I worked on some of America’s best-known brands. However, creating fine art was never far from my heart and in the 1990s, I selected oil painting as my medium of  choice. My canvases are painted using a variety of oil-mixing media, giving the images transparent washes of color as well as thick, bold statements using a palette knife. Each painting celebrates the powerful effects of light as it dances off the chosen scene. More recently, I’ve also been painting with gouache, an opaque water-based medium and acrylic.

Today, I maintain a studio in Nashville, TN,  on the east side, where I paint landscapes, seascapes, trees and graphic vignettes inspired by my travels – each painted in a brushy, impasto style.

To view my most recent works, please follow me on Instagram: @sahabib.