Tahir Bilal Ummi, born in 1990 in Shahpur Saddar, Sargodha, is a Pakistani landscape artist whose story reflects
resilience and passion. Coming from a modest background, he lost his father—a poet and painter who also practiced
truck art—when he was just eight years old. Financial hardship forced him to leave school after the fifth grade and
begin working as a laborer by the age of twelve, yet his love for painting never faded. Encouraged early on by his
father’s artist friend Tahir Mehmood, and later mentored by painter Ajab Khan, Ummi gradually honed his skills,
investing his small earnings in paints and canvases. Settling in Talagang around 2013, he developed a deep
fascination with the landscapes of Punjab’s Salt Range, translating its golden fields, rocky textures, and shifting light
into expressive canvases. His artistic career took a major turn in 2019 with his debut solo exhibition at Gallery 6 in
Islamabad, where over twenty of his works portrayed the beauty of Potohar’s rural scenes. Since then, Ummi has
participated in numerous group shows across Lahore, Karachi, Rawalpindi, Sargodha, and internationally, while also
winning accolades such as the Pushkalawati Award in 2019 and the Golden Hour Prize in 2022. His works are
celebrated for their textured realism, warm tones, and ability to capture both stillness and movement, offering viewers
a heartfelt glimpse of rural Punjab. Rising from hardship to recognition, Ummi stands out as a rare working-class artist
who has carved a place for himself in Pakistan’s mainstream art scene, admired for the honesty, dedication, and
authenticity that radiate from his landscape