Aysha Akhtar Verified listing

I am an emerging artist, located in Maryland, and a Pakistani-American. My life’s goal has been a pursuit of beauty. That word may have, to some, a flat, one-dimensional connotation. To me, beauty encompasses not only a visual aesthetic, but the very reason for being. In my personal and professional life, I have both experienced and witnessed profound cruelty, suffering, and ugliness. These experiences have caused me to seek beauty in the deepest forms through social activism, medicine, and kindness, and most recently, in my art. When my family, originally from Pakistan, immigrated to the US, we were poor, so most of my time as a child was spent exploring nature (which was free) and marveling at its wonders—at how certain trees wove together as though embracing one another, how the wind carried the whispers of the pine trees, how a trickle of water invited daydreams. In all my artwork, including my abstracts, I strive to recapture that impression of not just place, but also of time. I try to capture that sense of wonder that I experienced as a child, that sense of pure emotional beauty.  My brushstrokes, loose and intuitive, mirror the spontaneity inherent in the natural world, allowing the paintings to emerge organically on the canvas. The spontaneity of my brushstrokes reflects not only the unpredictable beauty of nature but also the resilience and strength that characterize the human experience. My art is influenced by the textiles of Pakistan by using rich color palettes.