Growing up in Bangladesh and Hertfordshire, England, Rana Begum didn’t know that being an artist was a possible future for her. Her father worked various jobs to support the family, and brought them to the UK looking for a better life. “I didn’t even know I could draw,” the artist told me recently, but since she didn’t yet speak English when she arrived in the UK in 1983, her teachers gave her colored pencils to keep her busy, and it stuck. “Art became a tool to connect with other people,” she added.  Her teachers encouraged Begum’s parents to let her take a year’s worth of introductory art courses, and support from a visiting uncle pushed them over the edge to allow it. When she was invited to an interview at London’s Chelsea College of Arts, her father surprised her by hiring a man with a van to bring her work to the school, where the crit session continued from the gallery out into the street. (Much of this is described in the charming 2023 children’s …