#art-interview

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Website: www.artisticallynagat.com 

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1)  How long have you been painting for? 1) I have been an artist all my life, since childhood. In numbers, I'd say around 24 years. When I was a child, I was obsessively drawing Disney cartoon characters and animation. As I grew up, my style changed to include different things like nature, plants, animals, and Islamic architecture. My art medium changed along as well from using graphite pencils and water colors on paper to oil and acrylics on canvas. 

  2)  Do you have a specific color palette that you gravitate towards? 2) My paintings are very colorful. The use of colors is therapeutic, in my opinion, because they are able to instill a sense of movement and emotions, depending on how they are used together. Three colors, in all their hues, that I tend to gravitate towards and use in almost all my paintings are blue, orange, and purple. 

  3)  How did you become involved with RAW Toronto? 3) I learned about RAW through a colleague at my college. I had just moved to Toronto in July to pursue my studies in fashion design and I craved to showcase my art and meet other people in a new city. My move and studies had kept me very busy and I was asking and looking around for exciting events and opportunities to showcase my art and meet other talented individuals in the city. Once my colleague mentioned RAW, I searched for it online and applied with the hope of being one of the featured artists. I attended a RAW event to right after I applied to see what it was like, and I loved it. It had so many talents and the atmosphere was great. I had the assurance that this was the right fit for me. 

  4)  What do you have planned for the upcoming RAW Toronto FUTURES Showcase?  What can we expect? 4) I plan to display several of my paintings to showcase the versatility of my art skills. I will have paintings on canvases, prints and framed art that I will be selling at RAW. There will be a lot of work with Arabic calligraphy and I am especially happy to introduce people to the beauty of this school and type of art that has been around for many centuries. If there are people unaware of this style of art, I hope I would have that opportunity to teach them something new about my artwork, the beauty of the Arabic calligraphy and the Islamic art, and how I mix East and West style of art in my paintings. People should expect to see a unique form of art style that they might have encountered or have been aware of before. 

 5)  Who is your favorite artist?  How have they influenced you style? 5) I do not particularly have one favorite artist mainly because my art is influenced by several factors like Islamic geometric art and architecture, Arabic calligraphy, nature, especially trees, and others. However, one artist in the 21st century that I am truly fond of is Gerard Richter, a world-renowned German artist. I enjoy the way he mixes colors using the palette knife as his art tool, which is something I do a lot with my art pieces, especially the abstract side of my paintings. His art is simplistic in its form but it is also very rich in content and depth, and speaks volumes. I wish that as an artist, I would be able to reach that level of skills with my artwork and widen my horizons of creative abilities.