With her carefully curated pastel background and her candy floss themed Fan Art, her angelic backdrop to her beautiful images is guaranteed to impress you.

19-year-old Tara Zaidi, born and bred in Nairobi, Kenya, first started drawing at an early age when she got into Manga and Anime. Inspired by them, she began to create her own storylines by drawing her own characters and creating her own plots. She dappled in Painting and Concept Art for a while and posted her work on to websites like Deviant Art and this gave her the initiative to share her work on Instagram where she mostly focussed on creating KPOP fan Art but unfortunately was met with some backlash.

Some people had a problem with what I was putting out there, like my KPOP fan Art. They said that it wasn’t ‘African’ enough or ‘Black’ enough and that I should focus on creating Art that focusses on representing me. -Tara

She believes that just because you’re African and/or Black, it doesn’t mean your work should be completely demonised for not being Afrocentric. Although she does create Afrofuturistic fan Art of notable black people, the majority of her work were initially KPOP Artists, which she is a fan of. Representing Black people in her Art, however, is very important to her and strongly believes that representation truly matters since in digital Art there isn’t too much of that.

It’s generally known that when you pursue something you’re passionate about, you’ll come across hurdles and one of those hurdles Tara faces is the lack of support in the Kenyan Art scene.

Most of the time, to get a job as an illustrator here in Kenya, you’d need to have connections. That’s the problem. To have connections, you’d need to network and sadly, there are little to no networking opportunities available. Also, getting commision work is hard here. Not to mention the lack of supplies, especially in Digital Art, it’s hard when people simply don’t respect the Art form to agree with my price ranges or worst case (possible) scenario, don’t even wanna pay for it, forgetting all the hard work i’ve put in. That really kills morale. But at the end of the day, I’m glad I’m doing something I really love and enjoy. – Tara

Check out these brilliant pieces and follow her on Instagram @tara.light

https://www.instagram.com/p/BbQM5Z0ARBv/?taken-by=tara.light

https://www.instagram.com/p/BfC_IbJAOjI/?taken-by=tara.light

https://www.instagram.com/p/BfIb6w5giDd/?taken-by=tara.light

https://www.instagram.com/p/Bgfp9-hFfxh/?taken-by=tara.light