We recently connected with Violeta Encarnación and have shared our conversation below.

Violeta, appreciate you joining us today. Are you able to earn a full-time living from your creative work? If so, can you walk us through your journey and how you made it happen?

For such a long time, I was under the impression that making a full-time living as an artist or creative person in general, would be an impossible mission that would eventually lead to heartbreak and disappointment. We’ve heard the cliché of the “starving artist” way too many times, so to me, it felt like a tried and true reality. However, as I progressed in my studies and had the opportunity to speak with professionals and recent graduates having a successful go at their practice, I quickly realized how attainable it is, if being creative is your passion.

It is definitely a tough road, especially because there is not a set of clear steps to follow that are proven to work for everyone. Each artist you speak to will have a few elements in common when recalling how they got to where they are and what they did to find success, but it’s easy to see that luck, timing, and hard work are very key factors as well, which are not things you can buy or find in a textbook. But it certainly brings hope to the situation and debunks the “starving artist” prophesy. Now there are so many different ways artists can put themselves out there for their work to be seen and discovered by potential collectors, admirers, and costumers, so it’s becoming more a matter of informing yourself on what you can do, and pushing hard to do it.

I have been working as an illustrator full-time since I graduated and although all my income does not all come from one source –meaning selling prints, commissions, or books specifically– diversifying the ways people can find and enjoy my work has certainly helped keep a consistent flow that keeps me afloat.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

If we start from the true beginning, that would place us in Havana, Cuba, where I was born and raised. I began drawing at the age of two, with the privilege of growing up creating beside my father in his home studio, surrounded by the vibrant culture and scenery of the island. Most people draw in their youth, but my dad made me love and believe in the power of telling stories through images from the start. Being observant and spotting art existing in everything around me, helped me realize what a big role it played in people’s daily life, and how it could become a meaningful career for me.

That is what attracted me most towards illustration. In many ways, my job is to represent the mundanities of life in a way that highlights a particular idea, feeling, or critique that can otherwise, be easily overlooked. To document and celebrate reality and what it means to be alive today as opposed to ten years ago or ten years from now.

In search of different ways of communicating artistically, I have studied music, fashion design, fine arts, sculpture, and printmaking, which eventually led me to moving to New York City. There, I studied illustration at the School of Visual Arts, where I found the space to combine all the different ways of expression into one. Allowing them to inform my practice when choosing between materials and surfaces. I have been a sponge questioning everything I thought I knew about myself and my work, to discover what else could be there under societal expectations, the pressure to be liked and successful, and all the other voices artists must battle when they sit down before a blank page.

Now I work primarily on editorial assignments for magazines, illustrated books, and I run an online store where I sell my prints, original paintings, and pet portrait commissions!

We’d love to hear your thoughts on NFTs. (Note: this is for education/entertainment purposes only, readers should not construe this as advice)

I know a lot of people were very excited about them when they first came on the scene, and I always say that it is important to inform ourselves as artists on any new ways to put our content forward. We can’t burry our heads under the sand every time a new technology enters the art market, without fully understanding what it could bring to the table first. However, I personally did not see how my work would appeal to the costumers in that particular market at the time and I still believe so today. I am considered a commercial artist because I make work primarily for a costumer with the intention to meet their needs, rather than making artwork just for myself and personal enjoyment. But even I found NFTs to commercialize my work way past what I was comfortable with. I felt it took away from what made it special and exciting to me personally, since my pieces take a lot of time to conceptualize and bring to life, as well as most of them deal with a pretty specific subject which I doubted could stay relevant in so many different iterations to sell as NFT variations.

How about pivoting – can you share the story of a time you’ve had to pivot?

When I had just graduated from university and was ready to enter the work force as a fresh illustrator, my world got turned upside down. AI was introduced and the art world lost its mind. It really felt like an industry I had worked years dreaming of contributing to and preparing to join would be diluted before I even got a foot through the door. When I saw this seemingly fast approaching demise of illustration as I knew it, I turned all my attention towards an art form I knew was not being replaced by bots any time soon. Tattooing.

I had been a licensed tattoo artist throughout my senior year of university, but it had always been a part-time job that was fun and creative, but not my full focus. It had been a plan B I was nurturing which quickly gained my full attention when I had this idea that I would be out of a job in two years. I thoroughly enjoyed my time as a tattoo artist and all the lovely people I got to work with. I believe all of my clients walked away with a piece of me and I kept a piece of them in my heart. I did very fulfilling work, but I realized I had gone full force into my plan B without giving plan A a true chance. I let the threat of AI and lack of faith in people to pay real artist coerce me into putting my dream on the back burner for months.

Slowly, as I continued to inform myself, I noticed that those who were paying for AI art were clients that would have never paid my fees anyway. People that wanted something cute, fast, and simple to put as a profile foto, a poster for a girlfriend, or a computer background. All the illustration competitions I respected and cared about banned AI art and no one who used it was taken seriously in the art community. Apps like Adobe implemented AI as a tool to help the workflow of artists, not replace them. As well as people who loved to gift artworks, still chose to commission real artists to paint their loved ones an unforgettable and irreplaceable piece.

To finish restoring my faith in the industry and my own worth as an artist as well, I was commissioned by Vox to be included in the Apple News+ Highlight of the Magazine to do illustrations for four of the articles in their November Issue. While working on them and researching references, studying what colors would work best, and coming up with ideas to illustrate, I realized that this was my one true professional love in this life, and I never wanted to do anything else, knowing I could do that. Focusing on tattooing for those months did set me back a bit, and even injured my wrist due to the long sessions I did, but I needed that time to see what really moved me and got me excited. Creative people will be good in many creative fields, but there is the one you can’t live without, and for me, that’s illustration.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.violetaencarnacion.com
• Instagram: _violeta.encarnacion_
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/violeta-encarnacion-1a01b01b0/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@VioletaEncarnacion
• Other: Etsy Shop: https://www.etsy.com/at/shop/VioletaEncarnacion