PESHAWAR: Noted artist Nasir Shehzad Nas has asked budding artists to portray contemporary and modern themes based on geo-political landscape in their worl(s.

Born with a flair for drawing human figures and nature, he did his major in commerce and launched his artistic career in his early age. Poster painting, pencil sketching and live landscape in oil medium earned him widespread fame.

`An art gallery in every big city of the province would motivate budding artists in boosting real image of our society, the upcoming provincial government must consider this project as it would improve local tourism industry besides visual art forms,` said Nasir Shehzad Nas, a resident of Abbottabad.

Under influence of his father Abdul Ghafar, who was affiliated with cinematic art, Mr Nas too gained mastery over the same art but with the passing of time learnt the basics of visual art forms from several master artists though oil medium remained his forte. He owns art as a strong passion and not as profession. Of late, he got engaged in live water colour painting.

He stated that he participated in three group exhibitions -one in Islamabad, and two in Lahore -and received awards for his art pieces. `The cinematic art used to be very realistic and ignited the spirit of audience but over the last decades it went faded into the pages of history following the downfall of the cinema industry. The budding artists should discover new themes drawn from the evolving geo-political landscape,` he added.

The artist acknowledged that he learnt a lot from social media about different art forms and mediums and closely studied the works of old and young artists and also came to know about use of visual art for various purposes.

`Recently, I got the opportunity to worl( with senior artists during last summer at an event arranged by Ali Sajid, provincial chief of All Pakistan Artists Association (APAA). It was a wonderful occasion topaint the beautiful north live with water colour on canvas. KP artists have great potential,` he said.

About future plans, the artist said that he wanted toconduct some projects on surrealism in art, contemporary themes and live paintings as the latter touched his heart due to sublime beauty of nature.