I made this painting back in 2020.
At the time, I was thinking about how we see children represented in the media. Somehow, the children chosen are always perfectly cute.
Perfect hair. Perfect smile. Perfect little faces.
But real children? 😄
Their hair is messy.They have little marks on their faces.Their teeth aren’t always perfectly aligned.And their smiles definitely don’t all look the same.
So I thought why not paint those children too?
I chose faces with little imperfections. I didn’t want to make those imperfections the focus. I wanted to capture something much more important their expressions, their smiles and especially that sparkle in their eyes.
Then TZPT saw the painting.
Their CEO had a vision that went beyond just looking at children through the usual lens of “cute” or “perfect.” They immediately connected with what I was trying to say through the painting.
They said something that stayed with me:
“This is how children are. The sparkle is in their eyes, not on their faces.”
And then they called me and said they wanted to display the painting at an event at the Multan Arts Council.
I thought, Oh, that’s lovely. 😊
What I didn’t know was that my painting was going to end up on a huge screen on stage, in front of an entire audience.
And there it was.
These imperfect little faces that I had painted were suddenly larger than life.
Looking back, I think what made this experience special wasn’t just seeing my painting on that screen.
It was seeing that someone else understood the thought behind it.
Because art doesn’t always have to show what is beautiful.
Sometimes, it just has to show what is real.
And maybe that’s why people connected with these faces.
They weren’t perfect.They were children.
