Me, my art & disabilities

Hi there! My name is Dashienova, I’m a 17-year-old artist currently seeking a diagnosis for Ehlers- Danlos syndrome. I’m also autistic and non-binary (they/them pronouns please!).

Here’s some information about me: My childhood has been pretty tough, mostly due to the abuse and neglect I’ve faced as a disabled person in the education system, and the ignorance of others alongside medical trauma. To help deal with all of this, I turned to art from a very young age. My work has become an accumulation of my life experiences, and a way to process those traumatic events. The goal of my artwork is to help myself and others who see themselves in my work. I focus a lot on diversity, too, as not seeing myself represented as a child (transgender, non-binary, queer, neurodivergent or disabled characters are only recently being shown in mainstream media) urged me to represent all kinds of people in my work.

Dashienova

A few years ago, the council refused to put me back into the correct education, so this left me out of school for a year. In this time, I worked hard on improving my art skills and starting up my career. This propelled me forward into the art industry. Then, about a year ago, I got contacted by a company to illustrate artwork for a tarot deck, named ‘The Awakening Tarot Deck’. This huge opportunity made me realise that this is definitely what I wanted to do and was reinforced by customers who bought the deck gushing about how much they loved it. It means so much to me that my artwork has had a positive impact on someone’s life!

Over the last few years, I’ve been working on recovery from my childhood experiences and I’ve made great progress. I’ve also started college this academic year, which has met all of my needs concerning my disabilities, and fully accept my multi-faceted identity as a neurodivergent, disabled non binary person. My recovery so far has meant I’m now proud of the fact I’m autistic (it’s my favourite thing about myself! I love my neurotype), and accepting of my other disabilities too. The biggest facet to accept was the use of mobility aids; I now use a walking stick to get around a lot of the time, and I’m looking at getting a wheelchair. I’m also gradually more accepting of my identity as a transgender and non binary person.

I’ve also shaped my art a lot more and evolved it into what I want it to do; my work focuses on diversity and aesthetics. When I was a lot younger, there was barely any representation of people deviating from the typical ideas of who/what a person should be in media (it’s thankfully got a lot better recently).

I draw people of all races, genders, disabilities, sexualities, body types, etc. I want people to experience the pure joy I did seeing the artwork of trans/non binary and disabled people when they look at my work.

Dashienova

My work also highly focuses on aesthetics. Everything I draw has to be pleasing to look at. Some of my favourite aspects to also include in my work are cool tones (blue and yellow being my favourite!), bright colours, and female/feminine figures. Mixed into this is fantastical themes and myths and legends. To create my artwork, I use watercolours, gouache and coloured pencils. I focus mainly on positive themes, as I do still use art to cope, even though it’s only a small amount now.

After college, I will hopefully continue my career as a freelance artist. To branch out my career, I’ve been sharing and selling my work on social media, mostly on my Instagram (@dashienova) and my website (dashienova.crd.co).

I hope you enjoy my artwork! Thank you for reading :).