“I flaunt my talent because I am working hard for it” – RIYA JOSHI
“My name is Riya Joshi. I am a 20 year old, Dehradun based self-taught artist. I do graphite artworks and I am currently working on realism/hyper realism. From my childhood I was very curious about learning art and craft and I loved to draw and pain. But being a scared and introvert type of child I wasn’t able to take my passion seriously. It was about 2 years back I restarted working on my passion, and slowly I learned doing realistic artwork by my own. I started earning little by little by doing commissioned works, and it makes me so proud that I haven’t took even a single penny from my home to buy even a single piece of art supplies (though some of art supplies costs more than 1000 rupees).
I belong to a middle class family, my father works so hard to fulfill the needs of my family. He somehow managed to give me and my brother a good schooling, everything we’d ever needed, and he always sacrificed his needs for our family. We never get opportunity to go on a fancy trips, we sometimes have to wait for 2-3 months to make a small wish fulfilled. It makes me proud when I see my parents supporting me so much even after going through all the hardships in life. To be very honest, i don’t to colored artworks because they costs very much. So just to carry on with my passion I started working with graphite pencils, but now this media that I use, it’s the thing I wan to take forward in my life. No matter in future how much I earn, it’s my goal to make those graphite sketches as the only media I use at professional level. I am a simple girl, with simple dreams. I just want to give my parents a luxurious life which they really deserve after working so hard, I just want to fulfill all the basic needs of my family, owning a house, having a stable job, doing workshops doing exhibitions…
