Meet Siti Husin

We were lucky to catch up with Siti Husin recently and have shared our conversation below.

Siti, so glad you were able to set aside some time for us today. We’ve always admired not just your journey and success, but also the seemingly high levels of self-discipline that you seem to have mastered and so maybe we can start by chatting about how you developed it or where it comes from?

My self-discipline comes from my religion. In Islam there are five daily prayers and my life revolves around them. I wake up very early in the morning around 4:00 AM to do voluntary prayer. This is my sacred time. I pray, recite the Quran (Muslims holy book) and talk to God about what concerns and worries me. I also plan for my day while sitting on my prayer mat after I complete my prayer. I also usually get creative ideas and inspirations for my art, business, as well as come up with meal menus for the day.

Morning is the perfect time to take care of our soul. Hands down, for me, prayers and reciting the Quran have helped in contributing to my inner peace. Having inner peace is important in my day to day life. If I don’t take care of my inner peace it’s usually going to be a hard day for me.

I’ve been doing this routine for many years. I’ve also gotten my family to establish the same routine — praying and reciting the Quran before starting their day. I believe that when you give priority to God first, He will make the day easy for you — whether you’re a homeschool mom working from home, working on a big project at work, or working on simple day to day mundane tasks.

Because I plan my day, I do not wait to be inspired to paint. Instead I block a certain amount of time to do painting. I schedule my painting time in the morning. I paint for approximately four to six hours. I aim to complete the part of the painting I’m working on before the next prayer time.

So, instead of thinking, what should I paint today? I come to my studio and already know what I want to do. This helps me to focus and not waste my time.

Taking short breaks in between tasks to pray helps me to refocus and re-energize. In a nutshell, the Islamic daily prayers help me to navigate my life so I don’t feel overwhelmed.

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

I’m Siti, artist and owner of Siti Nuriati Studio. I am based in Los Angeles. I sell original paintings, fine art prints, custom paintings, and personal art coaching.

I’m originally from Malaysia. I’m a self-taught artist and I started my artistic journey doing commissioned portraits. I moved to the United States 18 years ago. Two years after moving to the US, I changed my genre from portrait to still lifes and florals.

Besides pastel, my main medium, I also work with colored pencil and watercolor. But it wasn’t until 2018 that I started painting again with pastel. Also, I’m now focusing on painting flowers.

I’m most excited about my project, The National Flowers of the World. I believe this is a much needed project. A lot of people I randomly asked do not know their countries’ national flowers.

Personally, growing up in Malaysia, we learned about our national flower. But these days, the younger generations overlook this fact. Here in the U.S., having a large population and being a melting pot of many nations, not many people are aware of the USA’s national flower. I can see the urgent need of producing these national flower paintings.

After completing my painting project, I plan to produce a coffee table book consisting of all my national flower paintings.

Currently, I’m open to accepting commission work. I offer small 6” x 6” original paintings in pastel. If you have a favorite flower or want to give someone his/her favorite flower, a commissioned painting of that flower makes a thoughtful gift or a beautiful personal keepsake.

Feel free to sign up to Siti Nuriati Studio’s mailing list to get the latest updates on new paintings, special discounts offered only to subscribers, and the latest news on my national flowers project.

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

I can say that three skills have helped me to shape who I am today — organization, consistency, and marketing.

Organization is something that I’m big about because I was a former secretary. As a professionally trained secretary, I managed my bosses who, most of the time, were messy people. Even though I left the work field a long time ago, I still apply this skill in my day to day tasks.

I’m a big believer in organizing your desk and arranging your stuff neatly. Picture this: you come to your work space, be it an art space at the corner of your apartment, or a home office, and your table is organized and well managed. You’ll be more motivated to do your work.

Next, consistency is a very important skill because it helps you to stay focused on your goals and complete a project or a task. Without consistency, tasks or goals will take a longer time to achieve.

If you’re an artist, start a painting series for thirty days. For example, challenge yourself to learn watercolor. You’ll notice, at the end of the first seven days, that you’re starting to really learn to paint with watercolor.

Lastly, if you hate marketing, that’s just too bad, you’re going to have to learn it. If you look around you, everything is marketing. Besides honing your craft, take the time to learn marketing. In your art business, having some knowledge in marketing will help you to promote your art without relying on others to do it for you.

Is there a particular challenge you are currently facing?

My biggest challenge is to contact the right people/places to verify the information about their national flowers and getting the photos. Although I’m thankful that I had some countries verify their national flowers and supply me with their national flower photos, I still have a lot of countries to contact.

During the initial stages of the project, I used Google to do my research on the national flowers of every country. Then, I realized that some of the information I got about the flowers was incorrect.

Some places aren’t aware of the national flowers of their countries. Even if they are aware of their national flower, they usually don’t have a national flower photo that they can provide to me. They usually referred me back to Google.

But I’m confident that I’ll get all the national flower photos by the first quarter of the year. All in all, I feel very positive because I already started the project and I already had some paintings done. The only thing is to keep going until I complete the entire project and share the paintings with the public.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://sitinuriatistudio.com/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/c/sitinuriatistudio

Image Credits

Yusuf Friedman