Name Yasmin Bokhari | ||
Yasmin Bokhari is a Pakistani-American painter, poet, and social worker, living in Lahore, Pakistan.
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Early Life & Education
Yasmin Bokhari was born in Lahore on 11 November 1939.
She is the daughter of the late Safia Begum and Dr Riaz Ali Shah, a renowned tuberculosis specialist, award-winning philanthropist and personal physician to Quaid-e-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah.
She completed her fine art training under the artist Anna Molka Ahmed at the University of the Punjab and at the Shoreline School of Art and Music in North Branford, CT, USA
Painting & Decorative Arts
Yasmin is a cross-disciplinary artist with a broad and varied practice, including oil and watercolour painting, fabric painting, furniture design and decoration, interior design, and book illustration.
Her canvas paintings have been exhibited widely and are held in collections in Europe, Asia and the USA. The Yale University, New Haven, USA showcased a retrospective of Yasmin's oil paintings and watercolours in 2001. She continues to exhibit abroad as well as in her home city of Lahore, Pakistan.
Yasmin’s paintings are inspired by diverse themes and interests. Her forte is the traditional still life and many of her works depict beautiful flower arrangements and carefully arranged interiors, capturing moments of peace and tranquility in private domestic spaces. Others are portraits and landscapes, inspired by daily life in Pakistan as well as snapshots of city life taken from her travels around the world. Yasmin pays particular attention to the quality of light in her work, relying on the interplay between light and shadows, as well as the textural surface quality of the paint, to convey atmosphere and a sense or feeling of being in a particular place.
Poetry
Bokhari’s Urdu poetry combines her interest in the natural world and Sufi spirituality. Her recent collection entitled “Jugnoo, Titli, Phool Aur Tarey” (Fireflies, Butterflies, Flowers & Stars) was published in 2014. The poems in this collection are accompanied by her own illustrations and calligraphy paintings.
Social Work
Bokhari was President of the Rotary Club Lahore Central from 1997-1998. After moving back to Pakistan from the US in 2014, she co-founded Art n’ Life International Society, a social enterprise which provides sponsorship and professional development opportunities to aspiring young writers, artists and musicians in Pakistan.