In full bloom

LOCAL homegirl, Limzy remembers subconsciously telling herself that one day she would make a career out of being an artist. True enough, she has gained herself a reputation on social media platforms and has coined herself as a visual, lifestyle and fashion artist-illustrator with a penchant for flowers.
Inspired by her loving grandmother whom she made floral bookmarks for, she remembers pressing flowers between dictionaries and the result, the flowers bear a resemblance to coffee dresses. Today, she creates art in hopes for it to be meaningful and relatable to her grandmother who loved flowers.
Since young, her parents would enrol her in drawing competitions and in school, she would join national drawing competitions – and despite coming from the science stream with arts as an elective, she pursued her passion in fine arts in college.
Initially working with Western paintings and watercolour, she was later introduced to delicate flowers by her aunt who is a florist.
Starting with a blog to share her paintings, she eventually decided to make it her career and started recruiting a team. Building their way up, they have collaborated with companies such as Dior and Lavieflo.

What were you doing before becoming an artist?
After graduating, I taught art at my college in the children’s department and after that, I was transferred to the gallery department as a gallery assistant. I was doing work that is art related although it was somehow different because it was a nine-to-five job which I felt did not give me the creative output.
I got inspired when teaching children because we were using ordinary materials such as alphabet macaroni, leaves, stones and broken crayons. That was where I took all the bits and pieces to compose small artworks every day after work. It was fun at first and eventually escalated into something serious.
I then thought to myself, maybe I could use some of these materials in my artwork and make it relatable to the public.
How do you get inspired to draw?
It sounds very cliché, but I get it everywhere. I do most of my research on Pinterest, in magazines and by just observing people.
As I am more focused on fashion illustrations now, I draw a lot of figures and characters hence I enjoy watching people – their personality and attitude, the way they walk, and how they dress and their style.
Whereas for flowers, I love to take walks at parks, visit the florist and even plant them myself – and the inspiration comes naturally. When I switched from Western painting to fashion illustration, I struggled because I didn’t want to make it commercial and figure drawing was my worst subject in school. But I went with the flow, like the saying, when life gives you lemons, make lemonade.
How did you build your company?
I built it along the way and didn’t know there is a thing called fashion illustration. I got into the industry unintentionally.
We are set up as an events company focusing on artwork creation and live events. Everything comes down to me, but the team helps reduce paperwork and liaising. They don’t draw, but they learn basic things like how to apply or press the flowers and calligraphy.
What have you learned from art?
I think I have learned a lot. The biggest artwork I have done was a mural, and I really enjoyed creating it.
I also enjoy doing installations in shopping malls or visual merchandise displays. The execution usually takes a week, but the planning probably takes one or two months.