By The Lakeside

Pooja Kenjale-Umrani is a self-taught watercolor artist with a drive to become a successful entrepreneur in the creative field. She quit her IT career to take on a dream to do something creative – establish and nurture a successful art business!

Pooja was always inclined towards art - her mother and art teacher at school being major influencers, but it somehow took a back seat when she decided to take computer engineering as her major followed by a Master’s degree in Information Management from the University of Maryland at College Park, USA. Pooja worked in the IT industry for more than 7 years before she decided to change her career direction completely. Her real art journey began in 2017 when she started painting again, particularly watercolor florals and posted them on social media. Daily pictures of her bright and fresh watercolor florals captured attention and soon she was inspiring like minded followers to paint flowers with her. Never expecting that this could possibly be a career option, within three years, she turned her daily creative practice into a lifestyle which she decided to take on as a career choice and paved the path for herself through teaching and licensing her art.

Pooja is now a self-employed, full time surface designer and is a licensed artist with MHS Licensing. She absolutely loves making designs that bring joy. Her goal is to be able to see her watercolor designs on lifestyle products that we use in our everyday life.

She is passionate about teaching watercolor art to creatives who wish to equip themselves with watercolor techniques! Pooja has conducted online and in-person watercolor workshops across Canada, India, and the US and continues to teach on an online platform called Skillshare where she has taught more than 15,800 students worldwide. With a growing fan base of 100k+ on Instagram, Pooja shows up pretty much everyday on her feed to post quick and easy how-to-watercolor tutorials for her followers.