We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Quinn Marie Carl a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Quinn Marie, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. We’d love to hear how you think where to draw the line in terms of asking friends and family to support your business – what’s okay and what’s over the line?

Finding your support system in the Arts industry is challenging. Art is so subjective that finding those who relate or see something within your art is always changing. Finding an audience is hard and I always find that asking family or friends to support feels burdensome. I often give works away because it feels less intrusive than asking for people to buy it. Currently because my online presence is mostly on Instagram, you rely on algorithms to bring like minded individuals to your page and hope that they become customers! I am a fairly introverted person but every time my work is shared, liked, or interested with in anyway by family or friends my heart does a somersault! I appreciate any and all support in this business and hope that it continues to grow.

Quinn Marie, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

My name is Quinn and I am the artist behind Quinnwillmadeit. The name comes from my maiden name “Williams” and is a play on the music producer tagline “Mike Will Made It.” It started off a joke when I was playing around with social media tags and it just stuck. I am a self taught mixed media artist that loves learning all forms of creation. I have used almost anything for a canvas, from creating large murals, to airbrushing, to creating business logos, to having fun with face and body painting, there is always some fun project in the works. I have also learned digital art and love using Procreate almost daily. I love that art is not only something that makes the world more beautiful, but you can learn something new from it with every creation. I always knew that I loved art and that it made me feel most like myself, so when it came to finally starting to put myself out in the art industry I couldn’t wait to see where it would take me. I have now been in galleries, art shows and I can’t wait to continue to grow in my knowledge. I think it is so fun to collaborate on projects and really watch as a vision comes to life. I always say to my mural clients, this is for you and you get to see it every day. Whatever is going to make you happy and bring you joy when you see it, well that is what we are going to create for you. I think that applies to all forms of art, doing what makes you happy!

Any insights you can share with us about how you built up your social media presence?

Social media is such a curated place to be and I think that so many people think you can’t be authentically yourself. So because there is an overwhelming amount of eyes it could potentially reach, we try to be what we think others might “like” but I think thats where we often miss. I think it is so important to show up as you are and roll with it. I don’t think we need to show up “perfect,” and if we let go of that and just do the silly thing, or dance, or not wear makeup, have the frazzled hair, show the mistakes, show the downsides to things, then you’re more likely to build an audience that is like minded and supports who you really are. Then your social media pages feel more like a safe place and it’s not something that is causing you anxiety or making you constantly compare where your journey is to someone else. I always say to error on the side of losing followers for being yourself, than gaining followers for being someone you are not. Being comfortable in your own skin is hard enough as is without social media adding to it!

Where do you think you get most of your clients from?

Word of mouth has gotten me a lot of my mural clients. I love that I have a following that has become more like family at this point and people will share my work and also just come to me with visions and ideas they have. I think that once things truly start to buckle down I would love to have an email list that shares my latest works and allows people to further get to know me.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://quinnwillmadeit.my.canva.site/
• Instagram: @quinnwillmadeit

Image Credits

Paige Gullickson