We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Jamie-Lyn Della Selva. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Jamie-Lyn below.

Alright, Jamie-Lyn thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Are you happy as a creative professional? Do you sometimes wonder what it would be like to work for someone else?

Being an artist isn’t an easy path, and it is not that it will necessarily create happiness, but it will fill emptiness. A job is really just this thing that you do. A job’s main purpose is to provide you money, which helps you survive on a necessary, but primitive level of existence, to get from point A to point B. But I have found that it is extremely hard for me to exist with this sort of menial focus, and I often have fallen depressed when art is not central to my life. A regular job is, in fact, one of the main things that gets in the way of being an artist. Even if you are working in a creative field, I feel that the structure of it being a “job”, takes away from the natural and honest way an artist thinks, feels, and creates (maybe dependent on the type of artist that you are). It took a long time to have to accept, because for many years I tried to force myself into a regular job or career, but absolutely hated it and felt like something was wrong with me. After speaking with another artist that I admired, Amelie Hegardt, whom I emailed out of depressed desperation asking her just what she thought I should do for a career and why she chose the path she did that I felt comfort in clarity of not forcing something that wasn’t meant for me. She said maybe a career was just not for me, and that sometimes you just have to make your art (in so many words). Point blank. And, that is not meaning to be ignorant, make sure you have an income, but as an artist you have to stay true to who you are and some of us just have to accept and make sure we don’t fall prey to society and the emptiness of “regular jobs”. I don’t wonder at all about regular jobs based on this.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

I am a fine artist that utilizes mixed media such as painting, drawing, and collage mainly focusing on portraits and studies of myself and other people. As an artist, the main thing for me is to create art that evokes emotion. Every piece that I create is driven by my own experiences in some way. By creating art, it is a way for me to connect with people by feeling seen and heard, and then, if someone can experience anything even remotely through my work, the hope is that they will feel seen and heard as well. A conversation and a connection.. Often, when I make art, it is giving a voice to those that may not otherwise know how to express themselves, which is one reason I focus on children a lot of the time. My art is very personal to me, and those that have come to own a piece, it is then personal for them.

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 find that non-creatives often think that creative people are lost, or without direction. I have to say that it is probably the farthest from the truth, as most of us have known for the longest time (childhood for most) just exactly what calls to us and what we want to do, while the rest of the world seems to be trying to figure it out. It is mainly only society that will make creatives potentially confused about choosing themselves and their art over a traditional life and way of living. That might make creatives seem lost, but most of us have always known this was our path, and the more you struggle against it for the sake of conforming, the more frustration and pain you will have.

What do you find most rewarding about being a creative?

Being honest and true to myself and my desires despite everything.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: artemovere