• Current Scholars
• Alumni
• Dream Big
• Scholar Travels
• Scholar Art & Music
• Scholar Stories
• The Scholar Experience

Shanjana Mahmud

Biography

After Shanjana Mahmud realized that she was spending more time drawing and painting then studying organic chemistry, she switched her major to studio art from pre-med biology. But she delayed telling her family. "As a Bangladeshi-American, I grew up with very particular and clichéd sense of success," she explains. To her parents, art was a hobby, not a career. When Shanjana finally told her father, she was surprised how supportive he was. "As much as he wished for me to become a doctor, he believed that I would do well in anything I pursued."

Juxtaposition of cultures is an inescapable part of Shanjana's life and her art. In her award-winning work, she constructs paintings by attaching newspaper images to paper and extending the architecture or landscapes so that images connect. Shanjana is looking forward to taking architecture classes as part of her graduate studies, because of the key role it plays in her art.

Shanjana would like to become a professor of painting or drawing, so that she can share her knowledge of art with others, as her professors have with her, continue to learn from colleagues and students, and have ample time to paint. "I consider myself very fortunate to be passionate about art; it is a relief to think that I will not 'retire' from making art even if I live to be ninety-six years old."

Other Scholars Like Shanjana