Arya Silvart is a Polish digital & traditional artist currently based in Glasgow, Scotland.
Ever since I was a little girl…
Ever since I was a little girl
I was absolutely obsessed with drawing.
It was both a way to express myself and a distraction from all the chaos I’ve been experiencing at home.
My drawings weren’t extraordinary, frankly my art projects in kindergarten were so bad
my mother could tell them apart from all the others from a distance
as soon as she looked at the board.
But as a kid You don’t really care that Your art sucks,
You just do it for the love of the game!
Born in 1997, I grew up in Lower Silesia in Poland.
So I kept on drawing and soon enough things started to change…
My beloved grandfather was my biggest supporter!
He also made me obsessed with cats.
A big reason I’m an artist today can be credited to my grandfather, who always encouraged me in anything I ever wanted to try out
from riding a bicycle through playing a pan flute to being an artist.
I’ll forever be grateful for his caring nature and that he never made me doubt myself. He pushed me to become better without judgement.
He was a massive cat lover, he had a garden plot where he grew
his fruits and veggies but also sheltered so many stray cats!
I’ve spent a good chunk of my childhood on that plot surrounded by so many fluffy friends! Safe to say he installed in me that deep love for animals which has stayed with me ever since. Over time, that influence naturally found its way into my work, and drawing animals has become one of my favourite and most meaningful hobbies.
I wanted to mention him here
because only so much I can do now is
to let the world know that
he was the greatest grandpa
who kept my spark alive and believed in me when no one else did.
R.I.P
Grandpa Zbyszek
1941-2021
Things turned digital
Without any knowledge of digital art and with nothing but a simple computer mouse
I jumped straight into my digital art journey without even knowing it yet.
This is how on 15.02.2010 my first ever digital artwork was created.
When I was about 10 years old I had a massive obsession with The Lion King…
because what could possibly be better than a cat? A BIG CAT! And so I started drawing lions.
Around that time I got my hands on the internet for the first time in my life
and guess what… This is how I got pipelined into becoming a furry.
Yes You’ve read that right. At the tender age of 11 I’ve become a wee furry kid
because I was thrilled by the idea of having your own custom lion king character.
My favourite furry artist was this Russian girl by the name OMEGA VY and I started copying her heavily because I didn’t yet understand the concept of copyright
or anything else for that matter. I just wanted to have my own lion.
and the rest is history.