The name says everything.

My name is Keerthana (aka Keerthi) — not the name most people know me by, but the one my grandfather gave me. When I was naming an Instagram account years ago, it was his name for me that came out naturally. Keerz. Short for Keerthana. But say it slowly — it also rhymes with Hearts. Keerz Artz. I didn't plan that. It just arrived.

So this studio carries my grandfather's name for me. Every painting I make lives under it. That feels right.

As long as I can remember, I've been fascinated by colours.

When I was three, my dad brought me coloring books. I finished all of them in two or three days. That's how it started — and honestly, that's how it still is.

My mother is an artist.

I grew up watching her paint. I remember standing there as a child, completely still, just watching. It felt like magic. I couldn't look away.

But my real guru was my grandmother.

She wasn't an artist herself — but she had something rarer than technical skill. She had an eye. A deep, instinctive sense of what was right and what wasn't. When I mixed colours wrong, she didn't dismiss it. She sat with me, looked carefully, and guided me back. She encouraged me when I failed. She stayed.

She is the reason I became an artist.

Art is not something I do. It's who I am.

I genuinely wouldn't know how to introduce myself without it. Strip everything else away — the career, the roles, the daily life — and what remains, what has always remained since I was three years old reaching for a colouring book, is this.

The colours. The image taking shape. The feeling when it finally flows.

That is me. That has always been me.