We recently connected with Laurel Hoyt and have shared our conversation below.

Laurel , thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. How did you scale up? What were the strategies, tactics, meaningful moments, twists/turns, obstacles, mistakes along the way? The world needs to hear more realistic, actionable stories about this critical part of the business building journey. Tell us your scaling up story – bring us along so we can understand what it was like making the decisions you had, implementing the strategies/tactics etc.

Death By Art Creations has grown exponentially in the last 2 years, but it definitely did not start out that way. The road to where I am today has been long & full of frustration & failures but also full of determination & hard work. The successes didn’t come until recently when my style & skills reached the level they are today. A lot of people ask me how I do what I do, or how my brain works because they think I just woke up one day with an ability to make cool art. In reality, it took me 20 years to get to this point & I still have a long road ahead.

When I started posting my work on social media, I would get maybe 20-30 people who would interact with my stuff. That was really discouraging at first but one thing i’ve been telling myself from the start is that “my work will always speak for itself” so as long as a keep creating what I love to create, people will find me & people will value my work.

Laurel , 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 Laurel Hoyt & I am a horror-surrealism artist. I have been an artist my entire life, but I just started selling my illustrations/paintings at markets about 5 years ago. My artwork is not intended for any kind of political or social gain, my artwork is not just meant to portray what goes bump in the night. What I create is the embodiment of what drives us all, dreams, emotions & the soul. What I create are personifications of these 3 things. Art is my own personal therapy & within each piece is a little sliver of my soul. My only goal is to make art that people can relate to, art that makes people look into themselves and think. My pieces are also heavily inspired by nature & the grotesque beauty of the cycle of life & death.

Most of my pieces are digitally painted on a tablet, this gives me the most flexibility with colors, composition & detail. After each piece is printed, I hand embellish them with metallic foil to give that extra shine & sparkle. I have a website where you can view a gallery of my artwork as well as purchase any that call to you.

Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?

Being an artist my entire life, i’ve always been a bit odd. I personally love that about myself but that is not always widely accepted. Nor is the idea of wanting to be a successful artist as an adult. If I got a dollar for every time a teacher, peer, boss, or person of society told me I would never amount to anything or told me to give my dream of being an artist up to pursue something “more realistic”, I would be a millionaire. The thought of someone not going into business, engineering, etc. is incomprehensible to the majority of the public eye. All of those things are important but the blatant disrespect & suppression of the creative spirit has been very prevalent in my life as an artist, as well as many other young creative minds.

Though their words hurt at the time, They are ultimately what pushed me to grow, learn & prove them wrong.

Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?

One thing I have to continuously unlearn is that I am not making art for everyone else. When I’m creating a new piece, I sometimes get caught up in “what would sell best?” or “what would other people like to see?”.
Instead, I have to remind myself that what I’m creating is for me, to be an outlet for my emotions & to help me grow and learn new skills. I usually find that when I stick to that mindset, more people end up liking those pieces better than the ones I thought they would be drawn to.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.deathbyartcreations.com
• Instagram: @Fairygremlinn
• Other: TikTok: @fairygremlinn

Image Credits
All images taken by myself.