Interview
FATEMEH HAGHNEJAD
The Iranian artist tells Beren Neale about her creative process, lockdown positivity and why 2021 will be the best year ever
ARTIST PORTFOLIO
Artist
PROFILE
Fatemeh Haghnejad (aka BlueBirdy)
LOCATION: Norway
FAVOURITE ARTISTS: JC Leyendecker, Arthur Rackham, Chris Riddell, Norman Rockwell and Charles Vess
MEDIA: Procreate, coloured inks
WEB: www.bluebirdy.net
STRAIGHT FROM THE HEART
“I love all Studio Ghibli movies, and Kiki and Jiji have a very special place in my heart.”
F atemeh Haghnejad, better known online as BlueBirdy, is an Iranian traditional and digital artist with a sublime touch. She’s a character artist obsessed with storytelling, able to depict moments where a character – be it an elf or a commuter riding the subway – is caught in a moment of self-reflection or contemplation. Her art is intimate, with characters wearing their thoughts on their faces, so it’s easy for the viewer to buy in to the scene wholeheartedly. It’s a skill bourne of hundreds of hours of drawing, and 2020 unsurprisingly brought even more time for Fatemeh to hone her craft.
You could say it was always going to be this way for BlueBirdy (a name that came from an old woman in a dream).Born in Iran to a family of artists, it was her grandfather who was the first big influence on her desire for creativity. He inspired Fatemeh’s mother and aunts to pick up paint brushes, and as a kid, “seeing them all painting and talking about art and art supplies was so exciting,” she remembers. “Most of the memories I have from childhood are art-related, as doing art was always something that made sparks in my heart.”
What made the love for art and depicting stories stick was the precious moments it allowed with her mother. She recalls “the afternoons that I spent with my mum, when my little baby sister was sleeping, and we made illustrations of the stories we were reading, or just drew fairies”. And she also saw the dedication it takes to create art at this point. “I remember my mother would sometimes stay up until morning to paint. Watching her was really inspiring and since then I always had paper and pencils in my hand.”