JEDDAH, 13 April 2008 — P.K. Firoz, a twenty-eight year old Indian painter, is living out a passion — bringing alive on canvas sports personnel or a team with his brush.

And the native from Calicut, Kerala, does it with just a hope for getting recognition albeit hoping to eke out a living on the side. Though his penchant is for the portrait, he has wielded his brush to paint in abstract, landscapes and nature in oil.

Firoz arrived in the Kingdom two years ago and is employed in a calligraphy office. It is only after office hours that he indulges his painting skills.

For the last one month he has been painting a full-length portrait of the Ittihad football club and is dedicating his first sports oil painting to the club, which is on the verge of sealing the Saudi League title.

When asked why Ittihad, he said, “Because Ittihad is in Jeddah and they are optimistic of winning the title. That’s why, with a little prodding from my friend who knows Ittihad members, I began this painting.”

He said the total effort of painting the team on a 2m x 1.20m canvas cost him around SR1,000 - the colors, brush and canvas.

Firoz comes from a humble family — his father is a daily wage earner working as a laborer.

Despite this, he said, he is thankful to his father for the constant encouragement in his early years. He adds that it was his father who helped him develop his talent. While in school, Firoz, who has finished his pre-degree (12 years of schooling) took to painting after a simple attempt at drawing his father’s portrait. That was the painting that launched a fledging talent. Since then his father has encouraged him to paint and entered him in several art competitions, some of which he won.

Firoz has developed the talent of copying to scale and on canvas any picture he is given. He is hoping that his paintings of sports personnel will open new doors that would better his and his family’s life. He also nurses an ambition that once his paintings bring him money, he will be able to improve his abilities. He hopes to study art in the future and one day be apprenticed to one of India’s leading abstract painter, M. F. Hussain.

The young artist has already done paintings of famous cricketers from India, Australia and Pakistan and his latest painting of the victorious India Twenty20 team earned him 35,000 rupees. He has also painted Tiger Woods, the world’s No. 1 golfer, and Indian tennis ace Sania Mirza and former Indian President Abdul Kalam.

“So far the Ittihad painting is one of my favorites,” he said, while hoping that this would be the first step toward some financial success.