Art & Creativity Quote by Kiana Tom

There’s a quiet strategy in the casualness here: a model making room for herself as an artist without sounding like she’s auditioning for legitimacy. “I also paint” does a lot of work in three words. It’s an add-on, not a manifesto, which is precisely the point. In celebrity culture, claiming depth can trigger eye-rolls; framing creativity as a side practice sidesteps that trap while still widening her identity beyond the camera’s gaze.

The specificity of “acrylic medium” matters. It’s not “I like art,” it’s a concrete material choice, a small credential that signals she’s actually done the work. Acrylic is portable, fast-drying, forgiving - a medium that fits an on-the-go life and a career built around schedules, shoots, and surface. That practicality becomes subtext: this isn’t a fantasy self; it’s a practiced habit.

Then she pivots to “close friends” owning her paintings. That line performs intimacy and validation at once. She’s not selling herself as a gallery commodity; she’s positioning the work as relational, gifted, and lived-with. It’s also a subtle reversal of the model’s usual economy: instead of being the object circulated, she’s the maker whose objects circulate through trusted networks.

Contextually, for a 1990s-era media figure, this reads like a pre-social-media version of “I contain multitudes” - an early push against the flattening brand logic that reduces women in visibility-driven jobs to a single skill: being looked at.