The creator of Foxville Art is none other than one of the astounding children’s book illustrator; Anoosha Syed. Born in Pakistan 26 years ago, she migrated from country to country with her family and ended up in Toronto (Canada) as a freelance illustrator and character designer. As she travels often, she felt that she was too disconnected from her roots as someone of Pakistani blood.

Anoosha aims to illustrate for children’s book with the goal to include people of various race and cultures, and to also allow kids to feel represented as a part of society with no discrimination. I am a strong believer that learning starts from young and we are never born with the personality traits that we have. Which is why I state that racism is something that you are taught, but not something that you are born with. From Anoosha’s illustration, she has a fair share of multi-diverse characters in her books who have an amazing friendship and are always on a great adventure. Anoosha’s illustration aids the storyline of the book well with her in depth studies in painting people of colour, without the need to stick to just a single colour to represent a certain race. She has various studies of shapes, sizes, outfits (of different race), poses and facial expressions to aid her illustrations.

The reason why Anoosha’s artwork inspires me is because the way that she portrays her art feels welcoming with the soft pastel colour palettes that she uses and adorable character design. Despite the soft look of her illustration, she still manages to convey her message (regarding representation across) to her audience. Also, to have a minority in a renowned industry is a huge steppingstone for us people of colour. As content creators, we have our respective voices and whatever we post online or at art exhibits, are of our own voices wanting to be heard.