Shadia Sabagh

Honestly, freedom. Because I'm self-taught, I never learned the rules — so I never felt bound by them. I don't create from a textbook or follow the guidelines of how things should be done. I just play. I experiment with materials and mediums and follow what I feel, rather than what's expected.

That freedom has shaped everything. I work across a wide range of ideas and techniques, and my versatility allows me to express concepts in ways that feel dynamic and alive rather than formulaic. I'm constantly pushing, refining, discovering — curiosity drives the whole practice.

I'm also deeply committed to work that bridges art and function. I want what I make to be meaningful and accessible — pieces that hold a room, that people actually live with. That connection between the work and the spaces it inhabits matters a great deal to me.

Resilience has been central too. Building a studio practice from nothing — no formal training, no institutional path — requires a certain stubbornness. And I've learned to channel that, along with my emotional experiences, directly into the work. Abstract forms can hold a lot. Complex feelings, ideas that resist language — they find their shape there.

I've had the privilege of collaborating with brands like Yves Saint Laurent Beauty and showing at art fairs across the United States and internationally. But at the root of all of it is the same thing it's always been: I do what I feel.

Honestly, it wasn't advice from anyone. It was a moment of reckoning with myself.

I was working in healthcare and I genuinely hated my life. Then COVID happened, and something cracked open. I remember thinking — this cannot be life. I cannot keep doing this. I have always known that I need to love what I do. I'm not built to spend my life doing something just for a paycheck, something that doesn't light me up.

So I asked myself what I actually loved. And the answer was the same thing it had been since I was a little girl: painting, drawing, making things. That was never going to change.

What shifted was the belief that I could build a life around it. That I could find a way to monetize what I loved rather than abandon it for something practical. I trusted that instinct — and that trust became the foundation of everything I've built since.

So I suppose the best career advice I ever received came from myself, in the middle of a crisis, when I finally got quiet enough to listen.

Be persistent. And don't give up on yourself during the delays — because there will be delays. That's not failure. That's the process.

Overnight success is a myth. Every artist, every singer, every actor, every writer — to truly master a creative practice, it takes years. First you find the curiosity. Then you develop the patience to actually learn the craft. Then you build the tenacity to push through when nothing seems to be happening. And you have to be okay with the silence. There will be long stretches where you're working and nothing is coming back — no recognition, no results, no validation. You have to learn to be okay in that silence, and keep going anyway.

Don't take shortcuts. A shortcut might get you one moment of visibility, but it won't build anything that lasts. Do the work. Build something foundational. I'd rather have grounded, lasting support than something that flares up and disappears.

I'm also 100% bootstrapped — I fund everything myself. That was a deliberate choice. It means nobody has a say over my work or my creative direction. I don't answer to investors or partners. That independence is everything to me, and I'd encourage other women to think seriously about protecting their creative control from the very beginning.

The path I took was hard. I went the long way around. My advice is simply: you don't have to. Go directly toward what you love. Trust yourself earlier than I did. You'll save yourself years.

The biggest challenge as a multidisciplinary artist is identity. When you work across painting, sculpture, design, and consulting, people want to put you in a box — and there isn't one. You have to be confident enough in the full scope of what you do that you don't shrink yourself to make it easier for others to understand you. That takes time and a certain stubbornness.

There's also the operational reality of moving between industries. Each world has its own language, its own expectations, its own pace. The art world operates very differently from the interior design world, which operates very differently from the brand consulting world. Constantly adapting without losing your thread — that's the real work behind the work.

But that same complexity is also where the opportunity lives. Because I move between worlds, I can see connections that specialists can't. I can bring something to a brand that a traditional consultant won't, and bring something to a space that a traditional artist won't. That cross-disciplinary perspective is genuinely rare, and the market for it is only growing.

The broader opportunity right now is that collectors, designers, and brands are all hungry for work that bridges function and meaning — art that doesn't just hang on a wall but actually shapes how a space feels, how a brand is perceived, how people move through a room. That's exactly what I do. So in many ways, the moment is aligned with the practice.

Authenticity, first. In everything. I don't follow rules or guidelines — I never have. I play, I experiment, I do what I feel. That's not recklessness, it's honesty. The work has to come from a real place or it means nothing.

Passion over profit. I left a career that paid well and made me miserable. I will not go back to that. Doing what I love for a living isn't a luxury — for me, it's a requirement. I can't create from a place of obligation.

Curiosity and cross-pollination. I'm drawn to ideas from everywhere — different disciplines, different worlds, different ways of seeing. That restlessness is actually one of my greatest strengths. It keeps the work alive.

And compassion — genuinely, deeply. I'm involved with the Lotus House Women's Shelter in Miami, and that work means a great deal to me. Women who find themselves without a home, often with children, facing the task of rebuilding everything from nothing — I feel a profound connection to that struggle. Not because I've lived it exactly, but because I know what it is to feel like the odds are stacked against you. Women have a harder road in many spaces, and I don't think we talk about that honestly enough. What the Lotus House does — giving women education, stability, a foundation to stand on again — that's the kind of support I believe in. Grounded. Real. Long-lasting.

Independence rounds it all out. I'm fully bootstrapped — no investors, no partners, no outside voices over my creative decisions. That's not stubbornness, it's integrity. The work stays mine. The vision stays mine. That matters more to me than scale for its own sake.