Maya Sessoms

The first piece in my portfolio is an underwater portrait called Still Water Sings. It is quiet, but it carries most of what I want my art to do: start with a character, give her a world, and let the viewer finish the story. Nearly everything I draw works that way. A siren under the surface, a rider and her mount, a knight holding something dangerous on a chain. From there the world grows outward, the cultures, climates, and stories the character implies. To me, design is storytelling. Every silhouette, texture, and color choice says something.

That imagination runs on discipline. I draw from life all the time, charcoal figure studies, plaster busts, self-portraits in graphite, because I think weight, light, and anatomy are what make invented worlds feel real. The observational work and the fantasy work feed each other.

I have taken AP courses every year of high school, and the science classes have ended up feeding my art more than I expected. Anatomy and biology changed how I think about the figure, how weight sits on a skeleton, how a muscle pulls when a character moves. I like that side of my brain and the drawing side, and I do not want to pick one. That is why Carnegie Mellon's BXA program stands out to me. Building my own degree that connects science with a serious studio practice sounds like the way I already work.

I want to study illustration, concept art, and animation somewhere that takes both craft and storytelling seriously, and eventually design characters and worlds for film, games, and publishing.