So much so she quit her corporate day job to pursue her passion. Now she hopes others in the South Asian community might be inspired to try painting themselves.
The Airdrie-based artist loves to paint colourful depictions of popular Indian deities like Krishna and Ganesh, and colourful works that reflect her Indian heritage and upbringing.
“It’s in my DNA. My mother is an artist, my sister is an artist. My mother does embroidery, painting, stitching, everything,” said Suda.
Suda moved to Canada nine years ago from northern India. She quit her corporate job four years ago to pursue her dream of being a full-time artist.
Suruchi Suda poses with one of her signature colourful paintings. The Airdrie artist hopes to inspire others to pick up a brush and try art as a hobby. (Submitted by Suruchi Suda)
“Initially it was difficult. For a year I had close to no business, but I’m busy now.”
“I’m Indian at heart and I love colours, bright colours. Indian subjects like Krishna or Ganesha, they have several shapes and we can imagine them in any colours. If I put more colours on my canvas it makes me happy and through this I want to spread happiness.”
Suda now sells her colourful paintings to customers all over the world. They’re also popular with Calgary’s Indo-Canadian community.
“India is a country of colours so if my subject is Indian I can put more colours in it. Krishna is a symbol of love and when I’m painting Krishna I feel love, I feel blessed myself and when it goes to my client’s home I feel like I’m sending some love to them.”
Krishna is one of the most popular Gods in Hinduism.
The elephant-headed Hindu God of beginnings, Ganesh, is another favourite subject for Suda.
Suruchi Suda has always been an artist but decided to follow her passion and go full time four years ago. (Dan McGarvey/CBC)
“Ganesha is worshipped at the beginning of anything so if you have Ganesha you have the blessings of Genesha in your home or office. If you see Ganesha around you, you are blessed. These two are my favourite subjects,” she said.
But her work isn’t restricted to Indian themes. Suda also paints horses and landscapes inspired by her new home in Alberta.
“I paint more South Asian stuff so most of my clients are South Asian, but I sell some of my paintings to other communities, paintings other than Indian Gods. Just a couple of months ago I painted an angel, I also painted a house for a Canadian client. Another painting went to an American.”
Suruchi Suda stands alongside another colourful painting. (Submitted by Suruchi Suda)
Suda says she develops a connection to many of her paintings, which can make it difficult to part with them once they are completed and ready for a customer.
“Sometimes I feel so sad and even cry when my paintings are sold. It’s like my baby is going away, but there’s happiness as well that they’re getting adopted.”
One of Suruchi Suda’s artworks hangs in her basement studio at her home in Airdrie. (Dan McGarvey/CBC)
Suda says she wants to inspire other South Asians to take art as a career seriously. But becoming an artist isn’t on a lot of parents’ radar when it comes to traditional career choices.
“I do inspire, I would say, and I get many requests to teach from the community,” said Suda. “When I started painting I didn’t know if there were any other South Asian artists in Calgary but now they are emerging.
“I was artistic since my childhood but I had no idea I could turn it into a profession because there were was no such exposure. Then I came here and saw other artists selling their paintings and I thought, ‘Why can’t I do that?'”
Suda says other artists inspired her and influenced her own journey to becoming a full-time painter and she hopes to provide that same inspiration for others.
She’s busy now painting multiple commissioned pieces and large canvases.
LONDON (AP) — With a few daubs of a paintbrush, the Brontë sisters have got their dots back.
More than eight decades after it was installed, a memorial to the three 19th-century sibling novelists in London’s Westminster Abbey was amended Thursday to restore the diaereses – the two dots over the e in their surname.
The dots — which indicate that the name is pronounced “brontay” rather than “bront” — were omitted when the stone tablet commemorating Charlotte, Emily and Anne was erected in the abbey’s Poets’ Corner in October 1939, just after the outbreak of World War II.
They were restored after Brontë historian Sharon Wright, editor of the Brontë Society Gazette, raised the issue with Dean of Westminster David Hoyle. The abbey asked its stonemason to tap in the dots and its conservator to paint them.
“There’s no paper record for anyone complaining about this or mentioning this, so I just wanted to put it right, really,” Wright said. “These three Yorkshire women deserve their place here, but they also deserve to have their name spelled correctly.”
It’s believed the writers’ Irish father Patrick changed the spelling of his surname from Brunty or Prunty when he went to university in England.
Raised on the wild Yorkshire moors, all three sisters died before they were 40, leaving enduring novels including Charlotte’s “Jane Eyre,” Emily’s “Wuthering Heights” and Anne’s “The Tenant of Wildfell Hall.”
Rebecca Yorke, director of the Brontë Society, welcomed the restoration.
“As the Brontës and their work are loved and respected all over the world, it’s entirely appropriate that their name is spelled correctly on their memorial,” she said.
