About

Are you curious about Maij Studio and the person behind it? Then you've come to the right place. Here you can read a little bit more about my journey and the passion I have for art and illustration!

Oh look! 👀

An animal loving illustrator in her natural habitat!

This is me, Frida, doing what I love most: DRAWING. It hasn't always been this way though, in fact I didn't make the leap to become a full time illustrator until 2023. You can read more about my journey below.

The story behind the name

Why Maij?

It's not as complicated or mysterious as you might think. When I got started painting again I didn't dare posting art under my own name, so I figured I would use an alias! Maij was the name of my grandmother who I loved dearly, creating illustrations under her name felt like a great homage to her.

The journey of Frida

Let's do a quick recap of how we ended up here! I loved drawing as a child and I was getting pretty good at it, however when I was 14 years old I got rheumatoid arthritis which forced me to quit. It took a couple of years for the doctors to help me find the right medication to get my body in check, by that time I had drifted away from drawing and started focusing on more 'traditional' stuff in school.

Fast forward to 2020, I had gotten my bachelor and was working in HR when suddenly the pandemic swept over the world. Since my body is more receptive to diseases due to my auto immune condition, I caught it early and I caught it hard. The following years were some of the worst of my life. After a month of intense symptoms I was left with what's now known as 'long covid' or 'post covid'. I tried fighting my way back to my regular job but the brain fatigue and headaches made sure that wasn't going to happen any time soon.

I divided my time between rehabilitation exercises and trying to work a couple of hours everyday, making slow (if any) progress on my rehab. During this period, the post covid rehab programme promoted working with your hands since it has proven to have positive effects on the brain. This is what eventually led me back to drawing after so many years! The combination of working with my hands, activating other parts of the brain and rekindling an old passion had a better effect on my recovery than any other exercises I had done previously.

Both the progression of my rehab and my passion for illustration kept growing steadily from that point and in 2023 I decided to follow my heart and work as an illustrator full time. It grants me so much joy and hopefully I'll be able to share it with you through my art!