Untrained Wisdom – Season 1 Ep. 10: Live Wedding Painter Najma Sharif Shuva Rahim: The show notes for this episode include a link to my guest’s website and Instagram account. There is also a downloadable link of the transcript to this episode. Show notes from all previous episodes also include respective transcripts. Shuva Rahim: Hello friends. My guest today is Najma Sharif. Najma I grew up in Bangladesh and Pakistan. She moved to Canada to pursue graduate work in 1975 and married a fellow graduate student from India in 1978. They settled in the Halifax, Nova Scotia area to raise their two daughters, who are now grown with families of their own in other parts of Canada, and where she as well as her husband became professors of economics at nearby universities. About three years ago, Najma retired from teaching to become a full time painter with a specialty of painting live at weddings all across Canada. All right. Great. Well, thank you, Najma Appi, And I'm calling Najma Appi because we're related. You are the first family member I have actually interviewed in this format. So before we get into that, I want to go into our opening question, which is how do you take care of yourself? Najma Sharif: I try to eat properly, a little bit of exercise, walking treadmill. But more than that, when I paint I feel better. So you can say that that's my therapy. Shuva Rahim: Okay. All right. That's good. So we're from Bangladesh and I called you Najma Appi because Appi is what you would call a female cousin. But we're not first cousins. Can you explain how we're related? Najma Sharif: Your mom is my mother's cousin. So she's actually cousin once removed, right? So you are my twice-removed cousin. Shuva Rahim: Okay. [laughter] Najma Sharif: Your mother was so near in age to me that she was more of a friend, and we were friends from a really early childhood. Shuva Rahim: It's really cool that I'm as close to you as I am. Even though the blood relationship doesn't feel close the emotional relationship feels close. Najma Sharif: Yeah. Yeah. Shuva Rahim: Alright. 'cause I've known you pretty much all my life. Najma Sharif: I know I saw you from when you were a baby. Shuva Rahim: [Laughter] All right. Well, let's start talking about your painting. So when did you begin painting? How old were you? Najma Sharif: I think it really started when I was a teenager. I used to just doodle in my books in my class work, everywhere. And even my teachers knew when I was bored because I'd be doodling. And then slowly, slowly, I started to sketch more, even though we didn't have the proper art supplies. Then I used little children's paint box, with the one little brush and I used to draw and paint quite a lot. But as I grew up, it was not really encouraged that I pursue art because it wasn't supposed to be a career that a girl can do. Shuva Rahim: Did you ever get in trouble for painting because you said your teachers would catch you doodling? Najma Sharif: I didn't get in trouble with my teachers. They were pretty good to me. They knew I was not a bad student, but I got in trouble with my mother all the time. She really did not think that I should be drawing and painting, especially I like to draw human beings. I always drew faces and dancers and things like that. So she thought I should be learning to cook and sew and be marriageable. So art was really not encouraged in my parents' house, you can say. Shuva Rahim: Was your art ever taken away from you if you were caught doing it? Najma Sharif: Yeah, it was taken away from me for not doing other things, even though he has a child I always did well in school. So it wasn't that I wasn't studying, but it wasn't thought of as something that a girl from a conservative Muslim family would do. So that was the view they had. Shuva Rahim: How did you learn to paint? Najma Sharif: I wish I knew how to answer that because I just did it. You know, I just used my own eyes to see where the shades are, what colors. So I just did it on my own. I was never taught by anybody until I came to Halifax. And then I met a really good artist, Jane Shaw, and I saw she was giving a workshop. So I went to her workshop and that's when I learned what type of paper to use, what paints to use, what brushes to use. She just let me paint what I wanted. She said, 'just paint away.' Material made such a difference: having good watercolor paper and brushes, my god. Brushes make huge difference. Then also I found out that there's a difference between student quality watercolors and artist quality. These things I never knew. I was painting from those little children's paint boxes and painting with poster colors. Poster paper, not even proper paper. Shuva Rahim: But you wouldn't have known that. Najma Sharif: I guess the more I paint, the more I evolved. And it also went through different phases, when I would be just doing blue, blue and magenta type of painting. And then there would be just a few strokes and just one eye. But then slowly, slowly as I grow older, it's becoming more colorful. Shuva Rahim: So what kind of things did you paint when you started out? Najma Sharif: I love doing faces, movements, and dancers. But I also did a lot of landscapes because that's what my parents would not look so badly upon, right? Shuva Rahim: [ Laughter ] Najma Sharif: Coconut trees. Palm trees. But then I got into painting flowers also because I love strong lines, again moving of lines. And when I painted flowers and the leaves, I got that freedom to let my brush go where it wants to go, let the colors go where it wants to go. So that's what I did in between, going from my little landscapes and just doodling on books I went through a phase of painting flowers. But then started on my figure drawings again because I took a class with the - again, these are all workshops - there was a well-known artist here. He used to do lots of nice figures. So for one week I attended his class with live models, just learning how to draw figures very quick, the models would be moving and I'd be doing it fast. So that also helped me to do the type of figures that I do. Shuva Rahim: Now, before you got into weddings, when you would paint people or landscapes, would you be in front of those landscapes normally or in front of those people? Or would it be a mix of things? Najma Sharif: There would be sometimes if I would be going with this artist that I told you, Jane Shaw, we'll go to a site that you remember, Peggy's Cove. So we would go there and we will all sit on the side and draw and paint. So then people would, of course, you know, go around you and look at you and all that. So, so that's one experience of people looking over your painting. But otherwise I did on my own. I did it at home. But again, I never had a real studio. I just painted wherever I could, like in the kitchen or the dining table - just wherever I could find a place, especially when the kids were growing up. I didn't want them to be getting into the things. That's why I started doing watercolors because that would dry fast; that I could put away things. Shuva Rahim: Did you always work with watercolor? Najma Sharif: I did. In between I did do some oil paintings. But again, because I just want to finish it fast. Right. Impatient person. And oils don't let me do that. Shuva Rahim: OK. Najma Sharif: And that's why you can see that, you know, how live art helps me to do that because I just finished it in one night. I'm not going to do it the next day. Shuva Rahim: Right. Now you said earlier that painting is kind of like your therapy. Najma Sharif: Is it. Shuva Rahim: Is there anything else that you get out of painting besides just how your mental sanity? Najma Sharif: Oh, it helps me to forget things. Just right now, with this pandemic cannot go out and all that. When I'm painting, I'm in a different world. So I don't think of those things. Somebody's illness. I'm always thinking if I'm awake, you know, that worries me. But when I paint, I don't think of that. Shuva Rahim: It's an escape. Najma Sharif: It's an escape. Shuva Rahim: How would you describe your art? Najma Sharif: I try to capture moments; feelings, and moments. So even when I do the live art, I will look at what's happening and I'll try to capture a moment that I think would make a good painting.