MARIAM HUQ

I'm a 27 year old British-Bangladeshi and I started my illustration journey under the name VividbyMaryam back in 2020. I've always enjoyed art, but at school I was encouraged to pursue more conventionally academic subjects such as mathematics and sciences. At the time this made sense to me, so I graduated in Biomedical Sciences and went on to work in various related roles… but always felt that something was missing. In early 2020 me and my husband took a trip to visit his family in Bangladesh. I was nervous because this would be our first time meeting and I wasn’t fluent in Bangla. I wasn’t sure what to expect, but it ended up being a life-altering trip for me. Aside from exploring Dhaka, we visited regions filled with luscious greenery and experienced bright red sunsets overlooking towering valleys. It was a very different representation of ‘back home’ than the one I was used to. We returned to Toronto, where we lived at the time, only for the entire world to descend into chaos as the pandemic hit.

I was in a foreign country, under strict lock-down and struggling to find work. I started flicking through pictures of our recent trip, installed ‘Procreate’ on my iPad and just started drawing. I shared the illustrations online and had messages from friends, family and strangers telling me how nostalgic and homesick it had made them feel. Eventually I started working again, but I was still dedicated to learning all the basics of illustration, composition, color theory etc and have kept creating art inspired by home till today. I finally quit my job in December 2022 and was shocked to be accepted for some amazing grants and mentorship programmes shortly afterwards, which gave me the confidence to keep going. This year has been unpredictable for many reasons and there were many challenges over the past 9 months that almost pushed me to give up. At times sales had completely slowed down, and the creative block meant I wouldn't work on anything for weeks at a time. I had a few commissions including my first picture-book and with encouragement from my mentor, I released a new collection of work that I was really happy with, but still felt that things were moving slowly. A few weeks ago I decided to try out something completely new, and posted a video of my first time doing live event illustration at a wedding. It had such an incredible response online, that my inbox was absolutely flooded and I’ve now started to offer the service on a regular basis. The most recent event I was booked for was at the iconic Tower of London - it sounds more unbelievable each time I think about it!

 look back at the last three years, and feel content in my decision to pursue the arts. I’m so glad I didn’t give up, because with resilience and lots of encouraging words from my online and offline communities, I can now say that I’m a published digital illustrator and live event artist. I don’t want to stop there, and long-term I’d love to have the opportunity to work on more picture books and projects that benefit the community. South Asian artists are still few and far between, but I hope to be a part of changing that narrative and encourage people with a similar background and creative interest to mine that you can do anything you put your mind to. I’d also like to take a moment to say to anyone who is struggling to find their place in the world, once you find your calling, listen to it. Even if you can’t dedicate all the time and energy you want to it right now, don’t give up - keep it going, even if it’s in a small way because eventually it could be the thing that brings you joy everyday.