Meet Charmaine

We recently connected with Charmaine and have shared our conversation below.

Charmaine, thanks so much for taking the time to share your insights and lessons with us today. We’re particularly interested in hearing about how you became such a resilient person. Where do you get your resilience from?

My resilience comes from growing up as a migrant kid who had to adapt constantly. We moved a lot, so I learnt early how to adjust to new places, new people and new rules. I grew up in a low income single parent household, so problem solving was basically a daily sport. We had to figure things out quickly, and that taught me how to stay steady even when life gets messy.

When you grow up with challenges, you develop this quiet toughness. It is not the cute motivational poster kind. It is the kind you earn by surviving the things life throws at you. After a while, you stop being shaken by every little bump because you know you have already made it through worse.

So yes, there is definitely some trauma seasoning in there, but it also gave me grit, adaptability and that stubborn belief that I can get through anything.

Great, so let’s take a few minutes and cover your story. What should folks know about you and what you do?

I am an Afro-expressionist painter and founder of Runako Studio, born in Zimbabwe and raised in London. Growing up amidst various moves and migration, my journey has been a constant exploration of my identity, revealing that I’m a mix of everything and nothing at the same time. I paint to translate stories both personal and collective into colour, texture, and movement. What excites me most is the way viewers find their own histories reflected in my pieces, it turns each artwork into a shared conversation.

I recently exhibited my work as part of the Banksy “Limitless” Exhibition at Sussex Mansions, Kensington. It was a powerful show bringing together artists whose work challenges social norms, systems of power, and representation in contemporary culture. For me, it was a huge moment, my practice has always centred on activism, healing, and the Black migrant experience. Seeing my work in dialogue with Banksy’s message of rebellion and change felt like a natural and necessary conversation.

I’m also putting a lot of energy into my new content studio Runako, an extension of my artistic vision that serves as a collaborative space for creatives to experiment, connect, and bring their own projects to life.

If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?

The three things that shaped my journey the most were people skills, imagination and problem solving. They sound simple, but together they changed everything for me.

My biggest advice is to start by learning yourself first. Do the inner work, go to therapy, face your patterns, understand your triggers and your strengths. Once you understand yourself, it becomes much easier to understand others, which makes navigating people, spaces and systems far less confusing. When you get people, you get the world they built.

Use your imagination boldly. Think outside the box and, if the box still feels too tight, build your own path entirely. When you do not fit somewhere, create a space where you do. You do not have to follow anyone else’s blueprint.

And finally, problem solving. Set up conditions that allow your brain to operate at its best. Notice what helps you focus, what sparks ideas and what drains you. When you design your environment around how you naturally work, challenges stop feeling like brick walls and start looking like puzzles you can actually solve.

What has been your biggest area of growth or improvement in the past 12 months?

Over the past year my biggest area of growth has been learning how to speak publicly. I have always been shy and introverted, so I used to avoid anything that involved standing in front of people. This year I made it my mission to get comfortable with it.

What changed everything was letting myself show up authentically. I speak from the heart, because no one knows my art or my story better than I do. I do not need to pretend to be an expert in anything except my own life and how I respond to the world.

I also love listening to people and learning about their experiences, which makes public speaking feel more like a conversation than a performance. Approaching it on a human level has helped me relax into it.

It is still scary, absolutely, but I am finally finding my voice and trusting that it belongs in the room.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://chanakirasan.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chanakirasan/
• Other: TikTok: chanakirasan

Image Credits

Morgan Prime