FROM WANDERER TO ARTIST

From the Scroll to the Studio, Meet Sidney Ho

Author

Josh Hernandez
November 24, 2025

Sometimes inspiration doesn’t hit in the studio, it hits in an airport.

“Agony of Saint no one”

For Sidney Ho, it was a flight home from Prague when a random scroll through social media led him to @MadCharcoal, and what started as a layover turned into a liftoff.

“Seeing your works and watching hours of Mad Charcoal process videos on YouTube spurred me to finally get serious about my own craft. I’d been dabbling in charcoal for some time, but had lost that spark somewhere along the way.”

Tired of the polished, picture-perfect portraits filling the art world, Sid found something different, the freedom in imperfection, the harmony in chaos.

A year and a half later, that call turned into action. Sid registered his own art business, built a home studio in Toronto, and filled it with the kind of energy only charcoal can bring, a little messy, deeply human, and entirely his own.

“A couple dozen art events, a handful of new art friends, a repurposed living room, one battered easel… and I can finally say I’ve found my voice.”

“Will you love me then”

“I see the night in you”

“Chaos”

“Home, one day”

“Your process spoke to me. More importantly, it screamed, ‘You can do it too! Now do it!’” See more from @cuddlepea & www.sidneyho.art

Sidney is a Toronto-based contemporary artist known for expressive charcoal portraits that fuse gestural abstraction with realism to explore connection and identity. With a background in creative writing, he layers pastel, conté, oil, watercolor, and ink to build

The MAD Essentials Charcoal Art Kit was built for exactly this, to smear, scrape, and sculpt until something real emerges. Make the sublime from the chaos. Make it yours.

This is what the Mad Mafia is about: artists from every corner of the world finding their chaos, their process, and their inspiration through charcoal.

Want to be featured next? Tag @madartmaterials or send your story to [email protected] we’re always looking for the next voice stepping out of the dust.

Stay creative, stay savage,
- The MAD Team