Yasmin Tomaz

Regardless of where Yasmin finds art teeming in her world, she is bound to return to it again and again.

In her small hometown in Rio, surrounded by the greenery of the Brazilian rainforest, senior Yasmin Tomaz discovered a medium that would change the way she viewed the world around her.

“When I was around eight or nine, my mom came back from this wood store in a city that was about two hours away from where we used to live, which was a little town in Rio,” Yasmin said. “It was very, very far, removed from everything. The nearest hospital was two hours away. She came back with this bag full of art supplies, and in that bag were the first acrylic paints I ever received in my life. I spent the next couple of days outside painting what I saw. I was infatuated with them.”

Growing up in the vibrant landscapes of Brazil, Yasmin spent much of her childhood as a vessel of the culture, life, and color of her home country. Leaving an unmistakable imprint on her artistic vision, she credits much of her expressive virtuosity to the vivacity of the land she grew up surrounded by. This early exposure to art, nature, and heritage shaped not only her technique but also her sense of identity as a creator.

“Brazilian culture has always been a very artistic culture,” Yasmin said. “People down there are rooted around celebrating art and music, and the individuals behind that art. Everything down there looks like a painting. Everything was so colorful. So, it was really easy for me to draw a lot of inspiration from the culture that I grew up surrounded by. And growing up around the rainforest, nature [became] one of my biggest artistic inspirations. I think that being surrounded by all that nature influenced a lot of my artistic technique, and it still does today.”

It was in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic that Yasmin received the news that she would be moving over 4,000 miles away from the life she had known for years, making her way over continental lines and finding herself in Forest Hills. Her move to the United States marked a major shift not just in geography, but in how she connected to others and forged a new sense of self-identity amidst such a transformative period of her life. 

“I moved to the US right before the beginning of eighth grade, which is a really crucial time in someone’s life,” Yasmin said. “I went to a small public school in Brazil, and the classrooms had maybe seven kids in them. When I moved here, I got flooded by all these loud noises—plus, hundreds and hundreds of kids. In Brazil, it was so easy for people to be really connected because our grades were so small, but moving here was the biggest culture shock. Even today, I walk through these halls, and I still see new faces every day.”

Despite the cultural transition, creativity remained a perpetual constant in her life, manifesting in a pivotal way of translating her emotion and memory across languages and borders. As the landscape around her changed, so did the way that she materialized her art. 

“As I got older, I moved away from observational drawing and started pulling more from what my ideas were and from what I wanted to express,” Yasmin said. “It allows me to mix a lot of elements that I see and a lot of elements I observe, and to take those elements and transform them in a way that I feel expresses my current feelings and emotions, or the point I’m trying to convey through the painting.”

Outside of physical art, she has unearthed a world of artistic exploration outside of traditional tangibility. Through musical expression, a blend of sight, sound, and thought allows her to delve deeper into her craft.

“When I hear music, I actually see it in shapes, colors, and different splashes,” Yasmin said. “I always think very analytically about the pieces I hear, and I tend to analyze lyrics very deeply through their meaning. I tend to think of it very visually and how it’s represented not just as scenery, but how it’s composed out of all those shapes and colors and vibrancies and what the overall essence of the song is. I tend to see different cadences and beats.”

For her, art is never confined to a single medium or message; rather, it is an extension of identity.

“[Art] is all very correlated,” Yasmin said. “I think that every form of art is an expression of someone’s true thoughts and soul. It’s very much a reflection of someone’s identity. In every form of art, it’s like you’re pulling from somebody’s roots. You’re pulling from that person’s thoughts, feelings, and identity. Whether that’s visual [art] or sculpted or auditory, all of it is very unique to somebody and who they are.”

Through every pursuit—painting, design, or self-discovery—she returns to one guiding belief.

“Express yourself the way you want to express yourself, talk the way you want to talk, do what you want to do, and the people who like what you do will come to you,” Yasmin said. “You will find those people eventually. Don’t change that for anybody. The more you try to change yourself for other people, the more frustrated you’ll be with who you are as a person.”