Mariam Todd was born in Teheran, Iran in 1976 and left her place of birth as a young child after the revolution. She was raised in Karachi, Pakistan and now calls Virginia home.
She is the illustrator of Annie Smith's book, The Dancing Tree's Secret, and a member of Artists in Cahoots where her work is available for purchase at the gallery in downtown Lexington, Virginia.
Art is my way of connecting with creation. It is a living dialogue between what I cherish and what I witness — a meeting place of memory and imagination. Through mixed media collage, cyanotype, and acrylic painting, I give form to that exchange, allowing inner and outer worlds to converge on the surface.
My work is rooted in a lifelong love of reading, traveling, and gathering stories. These shape the way I see the world and become the undercurrent of my visual language. The colors and textures I encounter in nature, as well as in the fabrics and architecture of the places I have lived and traveled, find their way into my compositions. They form a pictorial memory map; embedded and deeply felt.
Women have been a powerful and guiding presence throughout my life, and they continue to appear in my explorations. They emerge as archetypes, muses, ancestors, and contemporaries; woven into portrayals that explore identity, resilience, and belonging.
My method for collage is one of layering and discovery. I begin by building a foundation with paint, gestural marks, fragments of writing, and pieces of tissue and paper. Upon this surface, I add imagery torn or cut from magazines and books, carefully selected to shape the unfolding tale. Searching for and collecting these collage elements is one of the most exciting parts of my practice. I select images that resonate with the narrative I am forming, then place them intuitively until the arrangement feels whole and the story reveals itself.
In my cyanotype pieces, I collaborate directly with plants and sunlight, allowing the wilderness around my home in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia to leave its trace. Through this process, the natural world becomes both subject and partner. The sun exposes the forms, the plants imprint their presence, and I bear witness to their song. These works are quiet records of what lives and grows around me; moments of communion with the land I call home.
Across mediums, my art is an act of gathering — stories, textures, histories, and living forms — and weaving them into visual narratives that invite viewers to pause, remember, and return to their own inner landscapes.
I do accept commissions and enjoy collaborating on art; contact me to begin a conversation.
