Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Diana Colon. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Diana, appreciate you joining us today. Learning the craft is often a unique journey from every creative – we’d love to hear about your journey and if knowing what you know now, you would have done anything differently to speed up the learning process.

I didn’t lear art the way most people do with paper, lessons or someone guiding their hand. I learned. it out of survival. In the Russian orphanage. Most of my childhood was spent in the orphanage filled with pain, silence, and long days that felt like they would never end. No one handed me tools to draw , so I made my own. I started creating a picture of hope. Nature became my tools for art. I use rocks to create the sun with a smile and sticks to create a house, this was my depiction of hope. I wasn’t just creating a nice picture, I was escaping from my rough reality.

Every line I scratched into the dirt with sticks was a way for me to breath when everything around me was struggling to breath. Every shape I created was something I could control in a world where I had no control over what was happening. I leaned to nature as much as possible because nature gave me peace and hope. That’s were my art was born before I held my first ever crayons and color book that was gifted to me. I learned to see beauty where there wasn’t sup[posed to be any. I trained my eyes and heart to focus on hope, and finding beauty in nature. And maybe the most powerful part is this: I didn’t stop holding on hope. Even when no one praised me. When no one called it “art.” Even when it could have been wiped away by wind or footsteps I still looked at it as hopeful art.

That means art isn’t just a skill, it’s a part of how I survived. It’s proof that even in a place designed to strip me down, I was still building something beautiful. I didn’t just learn art, it became a part of who I am. Art is something that I live through. Art is something that helped me to be the person I am today. Especially during the time of pain, out of the pieces no one thought mattered and I turned it into something that I can carry to keep my head up.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

I am someone who learned to create beauty in places where there was one. I grew up in Russian orphanage where survival came before everything, before childhood, before being seen. I didn’t have people that I can go to so I turned to nature. Were I wasn’t judged instead I was embraced. My story is rooted in loss, separation, and the kind of pain that forces you to grow up too fast. As an Afro Russian child in that environment, I stood out in ways that made life harder, but it also shaped how deeply I see the world, how strongly I feel, and how determined I became to find light even in the darkest places.

What sets me apart is not just what I went through, it’s the fact that I refused to let it define the end of my story. I create from a place of truth. My voice, my art, and my story come from lived experience, not imagination. I don’t just talk about pain, I transform it Ito something positive. I don’t just tell stories through words, I also tell Stories through art. I arty my stories and it’s a reminder that I was born to be a positive change. I cary the stories, the ones that are often ignored, silence, to too uncomfortable for people to hear. I am someone who turned survival into expression, silence into voice, and broken pieces into something meaningful.

I am most proud of how hard I work, and how much I refuse to let my past define me. I have always worked hard, even when no one was watching, when it felt like nothing would change. And through it all, I held on to hope. Not the easy kind, but the kind you fight to keep. The kind you carry in quiet moments, when everything around you tells you to let go.

I want people to know that my work comes from real places, real pain, redl survival, and real hope. I didn’t start with an opportunity or resources, I started with nothing and still chose to create. Everything I create, my art, my book, my story that’s rooted in truth. It’s not created to look perfect; it’s meant for people to feel something. My brand is about resilience, identity, and finding light in place where it shouldn’t exist. It’s for people who have been overlooked, misunderstood, or broken and are still standing. When people connect with what I created, I want them to feel seen, to feel understood, and to realize that they matter too. My purpose is to transform pain into something meaningful, and to remind people that hope is real, even when it’s hard to hold onto. I wrote my book “A Black Rose In Russia” as an act of honesty and healing. It holds truth, the pain, the silence, the hope I held onto when I had nothing else. It’s more than just a story, it’s a piece of my life that I chose to share.

How’d you meet your business partner?

I met Karlos Dillard at a time when my story was still something I carried quietly, something I wasn’t sure if people were ready to hear or if I was ready to let people know what I have been through. He invited me onto his Podcast “Ward Of The State”. And I remember sitting there, not fully knowing what would come out once I started speaking. He made feel seen and hear, something I wasn’t used to in hard moments. He also made me laugh. And that might sound small to some people, but it wasn’t small to me. Because when you carry heavy things for so long, laughter doesn’t come easy in spaces where you’re expected to open up. There’s usually tension, pressure, the fear of being seen too clearly. But with him it was different.

He didn’t just ask questions, he created a space where I could breath. Where I didn’t feel forced to speak, but instead I felt safe to be myself. And that’s what made me open up. Because sometimes it’s not just about someone hearing your story, it’s about how they make you feel before you even tell it. He gave me that moment of ease, that moment of being human, not just someone with a heavy past. I didn’t give him polished version of my life. I didn’t filter the pain or reshape the truth to make it easier to hear. I spoke about the orphanage, the silence, the survival…the parts of me that I have been carrying weight of for years. And he simply listened. Not just to respond, not just to move the conversation forward. He heard me.

There was no interruption, no discomfort that made him look away, no moment where he tried to make it smaller than what it was. He let my truth exist exactly as it was, raw, heavy and real. That moment changed everything because that was my first time ever sharing met story. After that conversation, things didn’t just end when the interview ended. Carlos opened up too. He told me that he had written two books “Ward Of The State” & “Abord The Adoption. About living in 37 different homes & being adopted. About the kind of experiences that shape you in ways most people don’t see. And in that moment, something in me paused. Because I realized I wasn’t talking to someone who was just listening out of curiosity. I was talking with someone who understood what it meant to carry a story like that. Someone who knew what it felt like to live through things you don’t just explain….you survive. I didn’t hesitate, I bought both of his books, and I read them. Not causally, not just to say I support him. I read them with intention, with the same kind of attention I had always wished someone Ould give my story.

Page by page, I saw pieces of that understanding. I saw the weight, the honesty, the vulnerability it takes to put your life into words and let the world see it. And that made me feel less alone. Because there’s something powerful bout reading someone else’s truth and recognizing the kind of strength, the kind it take to revisit your past and still choose to share it. It increased my respect and admiration for him. Because now, it wasn’t just that he heard my story, it was that we both knew what it meant to tell one.

And from the podcast interview, our relationship grew into something beautiful, he became my book manager, someone who didn’t just support the work but understood the weight behind it. But more than anything, he became someone who stood with me in a space that most people don’t fully understand, the space of turning your truth into something the world can see. There’s something powerful about the person who hears your story first. Because they don’t meet just the finished version of you, they meet you in the middle of it, in the vulnerability, in the uncertainty, in the parts that are still healing. And he didn’t turn away from that version of me. He stayed. And because of that , a story that once lived in silence found it’s way into the world.

Is there a particular goal or mission driving your creative journey?

I create to give language to experiences that were once silenced. For a long time, my story lived inside me without a safe space to exist. Not, my work speaks full of life. Because I am not just sharing what happened, I am transforming it into something that can be witnessed, understood, and carried by others. I create to reclaim identity. Growing up in environments when I was treated as “different” or made to feel unseen, my art became a way of saying: I am here, I exist, I see beauty in the world and my story matters. I create to turn pain into purpose. Instead of letting what I went through stay as trauma, I am building something from it, my book, my voice, my art, my brand. I am showing that pain doesn’t have to be the final chapter.

I also create to connect especially with my art. I create my art using nature as inspiration. Nature is something I have always loved. For example I think it is so beautiful to see the patience of trees to keep growing through every season. The softness of the sun shinning especially after rain. Nature reminds me that beauty doesn’t have to be perfect to be powerful. It can be raw, and still be full of meaning. Tree branches can bend and even break but still rise. My art consists of many different colors because I like to see the beauty of colors blending together. When I create, I think about nature because it is a reminder for me to see how the world reflects emotion, resilience and truth.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.dianacolon.org
• Instagram: black rose_inrussia
• Facebook: Diana Colon
• Linkedin: Author Diana Colon
• Youtube: Diana (Afro Russian) @blackrussianrose
• Other: Tik Tok: Diana Afro Russian