Maryam Al Zaabi: MMT Talent of the Month

Maryam Alzaabi is an Emirati student currently studying Architecture in the American University of Sharjah. Art is her passion and architecture plays a major part of her life. Maryam spends most of her days in the architecture studio at college and her nights turn into infinite art sessions. Constantly creating, making things with her hands and experimenting with a variety of mediums is what she enjoys most.

Journey

As long as Maryam can remember, art always existed in her life. Since she was young, the stationary shops and art supply stores were her playground, her heaven on earth. To this day, Maryam continues to stock up on endless amounts of sketchbooks, coloring pens, paint and all sorts of pieces of stationery that she could one day use for a project. Inspired by her mother at a young age, seeing her role model create art in different mediums and constantly making things with her hands, Maryam fed off the inspiration into creating art of her own. Whether it be doodling on the side of the pages, or sketching mythical creatures and aliens at the age of six, coming up with stories about adventures these aliens would pursue, the constant story behind any of her artwork was equally as exciting for her as the art. Being an active child, with constant energy, art was the only thing that she could focus her energy on to create something. She found her method of expression throughout her young years and continued to pursue it throughout high school.

Maryam decided to pursue her education in architecture and is a year away from graduating. She still makes art almost every single day of her life. She often finds her self-expression inescapable as she leaves a grand mess of splattered ink all over her room. Most of her days are spent working in her studio, occupied with insane architecture workloads. By night she takes a break from staring at a computer all day long by drawing whatever her mind feels like creating. This balance keeps Maryam content both with her achievements in her architecture work and studies, and with her personal art projects as well.

Inspiration and Motivation

Maryam is constantly inspired and intrigued by multiple things, mostly fashion and colorful styles that emphasize eccentric features. She loves experimenting with different mediums, colors and dips in between explosions of bright colors and serenely dark portraits. A lot of her inspiration, ideas, and faces she gathers from the dark vortex that is the Internet. Along with constantly feeding off comic books, art history influences, movies and fictional characters, she finds a variety of inspiration from the people around her and the constant need to be curious and experimental.

Although Maryam is constantly creating, whether it’s with her work for university or her personal art, her motivation lies within trying to excel in as many mediums that fit her stylized artwork in order to expand her knowledge with techniques. “To be able to pick up a brush, a pen, a pencil, or whatever it may be, and to create a piece of artwork that would make someone stop and look, for at least five seconds, is good enough. If it intrigues a person enough to catch their attention, maybe catch them off-guard, I have achieved what I wanted.”

Future Aspirations

Thinking of her personal aspirations in two different time periods, the short and long term Maryam hopes sometime in the near future to be able to host her artwork in a gallery, get exposed and meet fellow artists of the region who create similar artworks and possibly collaborate on a bigger project together. Perhaps in more of a long-term aspiration, Maryam sees herself in a house she could potentially design herself, spending endless hours in her studio creating endless amounts of artwork. But whatever the outcomes may be, Maryam cannot tell the future, she is content with constantly creating artwork, wherever she may be.

Get Connected/Featured Works

Keep an eye out for Maryam’s artwork, you might find it lurking in the background of anywhere!

Tumblr: fixthesky.tumblr.com
Instagram: instagram.com/fixthesky
Vimeo: http://vimeo.com/user2051370