Meet this Chartered Accountant and self taught Artist who paved his way to success through persistence

• • Hi, I am Gaurang Makhija, a Chartered Accountant, and a self-taught artist from the city of Taj Mahal, Agra, India.
  • Many people are unaware of their passion and the creativity they possess. However, at the early age of 4, I was creating sketches of Lord Rama and Lord Krishna.
  • This continued right through school and that’s when I realized PAINTING is what I absolutely LOVE.
  • Here is my story.

Back story: CA journey and challenges

Coming from a business family, I always knew that someday I would have to assist and join the business. I always wanted to pursue a professional qualification that would enhance my finance and business acumen.

Not only this but I was very sure if I pursue any course it should give me hands-on practical experience as well.

Taking all these factors into consideration, when deciding my career Chartered Accountancy became an obvious choice. And here started my CA journey right after 12th grade, like most Indian students pursuing CA!

CA is not everyone’s cup of tea and whatever you do or no matter how intelligent you are, it’s not an easy task, as was the same with me.

I cleared CPT (1st level CA exam) on the 1st attempt. The next level was CA-IPCC and I was fortunate to clear the same on the first attempt.

Everything seemed pretty smooth and I was all excited about my future. However, that is when I got stuck in CA Final as I really struggled with this course.

However, These attempts did not stop me from pushing myself to the top. CA has made me more determined and mentally stronger than ever.

Finally, after several failed attempts, I qualified as a CA in Nov’17. 

Advice to those pursuing CA:

• From a CA STUDENT’S perspective, I realized that it takes a lot more than just intelligence, hard work, and luck.
• It needs your PASSION & INTEREST.
• It needs your WILLINGNESS to study.
• After seeing failure, I pushed myself into making the subjects interesting.
• I realized, that blaming luck and hard work is just going to waste my time.

 My Passion for Painting

Coming to my passion for painting – during my articleship days, I would continue with my painting post-work.

Sundays were mostly spent completing my artwork.

I had decided that come what may I would WORK ON MY DREAM of being an EXCEPTIONAL ARTIST.

To be honest, the painting journey has been awesome, but the truth is where there are thousands of people to appreciate your artworks and efforts, there is just a handful who are genuinely interested in buying and investing in such artworks.

Challenges on the way

From an artist’s perspective, there have been times when I struggled for MOTIVATION, and there have been situations where things just did not go right. I spoiled artwork the first time and then rectified those the next time. There were times when I wasn’t willing to paint.

There were times when I had started with a painting work and did not complete it for months.

I love watercolors, soft pastels, and acrylics but struggled with oil paints and ultimately I realized the ones that took months were all the paintings with oil paints. Through all this, I have learned my strengths and now I work only on my STRENGTHS.