Mountain festival kicks off with online art exhibition

Islamabad: The 10th edition of the Pakistan Mountain Festival kicked off with an online exhibition of paintings titled ‘The Colours of Margalla Hills’ here on Thursday.

As many as 17 oil-on-canvas paintings, one each of an artist from twin-cities of Rawalpindi and Islamabad, have put on display on the social media page of the Pakistan Mountain Festival. The paintings are done in a live painting competition in the Margalla Hills National Park. The objective of the activity was to capture the beauty and the biological diversity of the mountain environment. The participating artists are Riffat Ara Baig, Marriam Rasool, Beenish Azam, Saima Ashraf, Beenish Ali, Mahsoun Mustafa, Mobin Abbas, Sana Sagheer, Samina Azhar, Sadia Ali, Fadia, Madiha Usman, Mariyam Mushtaq, Fizza Azhar, Shumaila, and Abeera Habib. Pakistan Mountain Festival is an annual flagship event of Development Communications Network (Devcom-Pakistan) to celebrate the United Nations International Mountain Day (IMD) that is marked worldwide on December 11. Briefing about the painting exhibition, Devcom-Pakistan Executive Director Munir Ahmed said, “The work is very meaningful and up to quality standards but due to new normal we have to go for an online exhibition instead of an art gallery just to observe the SOPs against the Covid-19. However, the effort is to environmentally sensitise teachers especially those teaching art. They can give a push to the environmental conservation efforts through aesthetically enriched visuals.