Rising Young Talents: Mira El Khalil “Starley” Painter, Singer, Composer…

One of the things I love most about teaching is the fact that I get to meet new and ambitious young people every semester. It’s a continuous discovery phase for me, I start it every semester not knowing what to expect, but it always ends with me being amazed how much talent, and potential these young students have. Most of the time, they are unaware of it.

Whether I am working with students in arts, design, advertising, marketing, PR, media, political science, or computer science. I work with one principle in mind: Everyone is Creative.

Mira El Khalil is not a painter, illustrator, photographer, musician or singer. She is all of them together; she is a holistic young artist. The most interesting part for me is that she doesn’t practice art professionally nor does she work in an art studio. It’s a personal hobby, it’s her way of expressing her feelings of the world around her.

Mira recently graduated from AUB with a B.A. in Media Studies and Communication. She did many internships in the field and started working as a media analyst, mainly dealing with numbers all day long and ironically she likes it 🙂

You’re always impressed when you see someone with artistic skills like playing a musical instrument, drawing, painting or even singing.

I learned about Mira El Khalil’s talent through a class assignment in AUB as she was a student of mine, I was surprised when I heard her voice in a music performance, then I learned that not only she was singing, but also playing the guitar, wrote the lyrics and composed the music. Mira learned to play the violin as a kid and managed to teach herself guitar and piano along the way.

I’ve been following up with Mira’s work on social media. I was always happy to see her post a new song on her Soundcloud or Youtube channels, be it a cover song or an original piece. she goes by the artistic name Starley.

Mira is always posting doodles, drawings, and paintings. When you look at them, you will realize that she is good using any of art tools: pencil, ink, aquarelle, acrylics and oil painting.

I hope that real life doesn’t stop Mira from doing what she does best, that is being an artist. To be artistically gifted is a blessing, and art is something that should never be kept for oneself, but rather shared with the whole world.