We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Megan Burg a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Megan, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Earning a full time living from one’s creative career can be incredibly difficult. Have you been able to do so and if so, can you share some of the key parts of your journey and any important advice or lessons that might help creatives who haven’t been able to yet?

I started making money from my artwork as early as middle school, and continued to do commissions and sell my artwork all the way through highschool. I would do digital art and draw commissions for people of their characters or pets, and in highschool I began doing shows at conventions and buying a booth to sell my artwork. I took a break after highschool when I entered adulthood, and went years without creating much art, due to having to find a job that paid better in order to pay my bills as I moved out of my house at 18. However, last year, I started working again as a full-time artist thanks to getting a job at Chewy as a pet portrait artist. I now do these pet portraits full-time. I don’t think I would have sped up the process – Even though it’s always been my dream job to be able to paint for a living, I did learn a lot of valuable skills in the years between 18-21. I was a professional dog groomer during that time and I learned a new skill, as well as learning so much about the dog grooming industry, and it ultimately led me to where I am now.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

My passion in artwork revolves around wildlife and it always has. I enjoy paintings birds the most, and many of my personal projects revolve around native Florida species. For my job right now, I work for Chewy as a pet portrait artist where I’m able to paint my second favorite things – People’s pets. I started off in the artwork industry when I was in middle school, and have consistently made money from my artwork since then. During highschool I didn’t even have a regular job, I just did art. I made my way back to this later when I started working for Chewy, I am very proud to be able to call myself a professional artist currently – it really is my dream job. I went through some very hard times last year that resulted in me having to leave my chosen profession that I found when I entered adulthood, which was Dog Grooming. I was very talented and I learned the craft very quickly, and it is a very profitable job. For many reasons, by the middle of last year, I had to make a very difficult decision and quit my dog grooming job. I had no other plan when I quit, I just knew that I needed to. I started my job with Chewy not long after and I realized that life works out the way it needs to. I wouldn’t have been able to pursue my career as a professional artist without making the heart-wrenching decision to quit dog grooming, and while I felt very lost, I found myself a job that works better for me and that I love. Art has always been my passion, and I’m finally in a position where I can pursue this for life. In my free time, my artwork outside of my job still revolves around wildlife and animals. I love painting nature, and a lot of my inspiration comes from wildlife. I have a lot of personal projects I’m working on that I don’t necessarily have plans to profit from, they are just things I want to express and depict. I sometimes sell prints of these works, and I also do pet portraits outside of Chewy.

Have you ever had to pivot?

I entered the Dog Grooming industry when I was 18. It was my first real job and career path after highschool. I excelled very quickly and by the time I was 19 I was working fully independently as a groomer. I learned from the very best and I had an amazing boss. I loved it for a very long time, and in some aspects I still do. I love animals, and I was able to express myself creatively with doing haircuts, and I was able to nurture a very loving part of myself when working with dogs. I eventually moved and switched jobs to a salon where I was the sole employee, and I did this for years. Early on, I began realizing that my mental health was not going to support the line of work I had chosen. I took many breaks to try and make things work – I was constantly taking time off to fix myself, to try and keep going. I remember I would show up to work in the morning, ready for the day, and then I was going home an hour later because I couldn’t keep myself together long enough to finish the day. My second attempt at fixing my career was starting my own Mobile Grooming Business. It was really a situation of me grasping at straws to make this work – I loved my career, and I didn’t want to give it up. In the end, I couldn’t outrun my own mental health issues. I closed the business after three months and sought professional help where I was diagnosed with Bipolar 2. While my diagnosis provided me with an understanding of why I felt the way I did, and why I made the choices I made, it didn’t make ending my career any easier. I felt very lost. While I was working as a dog groomer, I struggled with the emotional burden of working with people’s pets, I struggled to keep appointments – I didn’t know if every day was going to be a good or bad one until it came, which made working an appointment-based job very frustrating for both myself and my clients. This brought so much guilt and self deprication because I was unable to do a job that I very much WANTED to do. It’s very hard to describe to somebody that doesn’t struggle with mental health – I WANTED to do this, but I couldn’t. So I made the choice and I left the industry. This was my career pivot – I needed a job that I could do from home, work on my own schedule, do something I love. I set myself on painting, which is something I never stopped doing, and I was fortunate enough to email Chewy and discover they were hiring artists. I have been a pet portrait artist since last year, and I am very happy with where I’ve come. I don’t think there would have been another choice for me to make. Sometimes things are not meant to be, and that’s okay, and it’s something that needs to be accepted sometimes.

Do you think there is something that non-creatives might struggle to understand about your journey as a creative? Maybe you can shed some light?

I have received some backlash from family after ending my career as a dog groomer and pursuing artwork instead. In their eyes, it seems that I quit a ‘real’ career and what I’m doing now is not a serious job. Painting pictures to most people is a hobby that can never be profited from, it’s not real work. I disagree with this. People that don’t create artwork don’t understand the time, effort, and emotions that go into it. The hours of planning a painting, and then the actual work and skill of making an idea something tangible. I have curated my skills my entire life, and will continue to do so. Even with my pet portraits that I do – even though they are not big projects that I come up with myself, they are time capsules of somebody’s beloved pet, that I am hand-crafting for them. Painting can be exhausting, it takes time, it takes time and energy and thought. Years of learning colors, how to use brushes, how to know exactly where to put a paint stroke and the depth and force for each one. My current career as an artist is just as real as when I was going to work every day. It’s just as real as their jobs. Just like I don’t possess the same skills they need for their job, they don’t possess the skills I need for mine. Everybody thinks art is easy until they sit down and do it.

Contact Info:

• Website: megansartshop.com
• Instagram: instagram.com/megansartshop