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

Alright, Mya thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. We’d love to hear about when you first realized that you wanted to pursue a creative path professionally.

My entire life, I have worked towards my goal of one day becoming a plastic surgeon. I always did well in school, taking the most advanced classes and making sure my resume showed I was a well-rounded student athlete. However, I always had a passion for art, especially since I attended an art school and majored in visual arts from 7-12th grade. I started college in 2019 as a Biology major on the pre-med track, and it was probably the worst I had ever felt in my life. I was struggling a lot with my classes, something that was never an issue for me, and my mental health wasn’t doing the best either. And then to make things even worse, halfway through the spring semester of my first year, the COVID pandemic started, and we all got sent home to continue school online. Trying to do biology, chemistry, and calculus 100% on Zoom was probably the hardest thing I have ever experienced, and it made me really start to think about whether this was the right career path for me. I started thinking about the reasons that made me want to become a doctor in the first place and realized none of those reasons were worth losing myself over. So in 2021, I switched my major from Biology to Studio Art, a total 180. I realized that I wanted to do something that I actually loved, and my life improved greatly. In hindsight, I should have started undergrad as an art major from the beginning, but I am glad that I was able to figure it out early enough to still graduate on time. I am so glad every day that I made that decision because I would not be living the life that I am today if I didn’t.

Mya, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

I am a portrait artist currently based in Brooklyn, NY, but I was born and raised in Rochester, NY. My work focuses on social media, kpop, and pop culture. I have been both making art and being a fangirl since I think I was born. I have so many memories of being overly obsessed with my interests, way more than my peers, and wanting to be as involved as possible. In middle school, I would draw fan art for my favorite YouTubers and mail it to their P.O. boxes. When I was a junior in high school, I discovered Kpop, which completely took over my life and started my longest hyperfixation to date. Naturally, all of my art slowly started to focus on that. At the same time, I have always been involved in the online fandom spaces for all of my interests, so I began making other Kpop stan friends on apps like Twitter and eventually TikTok. I even started posting my own fan content online, including my drawings and paintings, and have built a good-sized following. I like to paint not only portraits of Kpop idols and other celebrities I admire, but also of my friends I have made online and of myself. I think what makes my work stand out is the level of care I put into each portrait. Whether the subject of the portrait is famous or not, I paint everyone equally and with the same respect and detail. By doing this, I feel like I am challenging who is deemed “worthy” of having their portrait painted, since historically, only those of a certain class or status had the opportunity to do so. I hope that other fangirls and stans can look at my work and immediately pick up on the references that I include. I feel like, especially in an academic view, “fan art” is never taken seriously, so by basing my entire master’s thesis around it, I am introducing my interests to a whole new audience who would’ve never paid attention to it before. I am very proud to say that my professors and professionals who have found my work through Instagram can see the value in what I am doing, and are not as quick to dismiss it anymore. As I wrap up grad school, my next step in my career is to start selling my work and posting more seriously online. My dream is to make both social media and art my full-time job, while combining my artistic interests with my stan interests.

How did you build your audience on social media?

I would say the main thing that I focus on is being authentic. I have never hidden who I am or what I am into, and I think that by posting about myself genuinely in a way that is not too curated or tailored really helped build my following. When I first started posting online, I would just post silly, funny videos on Twitter and TikTok, freaking out over things like my favs posting a picture on Instagram or a new song dropping, which people found relatable. Of course, there is some editing and thought involved, but for the most part, I post whatever I want. Even when it comes to posting about my art, I never want to feel forced. Although I am trying to make social media my full-time job, I never want it to feel like work because that’s when I’ll want to stop. My advice would be not to overthink it. I always say “nothing is that deep,” and I genuinely think that has allowed me to be freer and more open about what I post online.

What do you find most rewarding about being a creative?

Definitely for me, I just love the validation from people online. This sounds super shallow, I think, but it does feel really good to post a painting that took me 40+ hours to complete and then have a bunch of strangers tell me how much they like it. I think that would feel good to anyone. But it feels especially good because I am painting things that I also love and am obsessed with. I physically cannot complete a painting if I have little interest in the subject, so when I care about the work so deeply, and then other people also vibe with it and can either relate to it or are also interested in the subject, that makes me want to keep making more and get even better.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://myaalissaart.com
• Instagram: @myaalissaart
• Facebook: Mya Alissa Art
• Youtube: Mya Alissa
• Other: Tiktok – @Myaalissa