Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Nica Quinn. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Nica, appreciate you joining us today. Being a business owner can be really hard sometimes. It’s rewarding, but most business owners we’ve spoken sometimes think about what it would have been like to have had a regular job instead. Have you ever wondered that yourself? Maybe you can talk to us about a time when you felt this way?

Being a full-time freelancing, unconventional artist with big visions is a dream come true, however, it’s not without it’s hardships and creative lulls.

There are well-known stigmas about being an artist, a creative– the notion of being a “starving artist,” or that really difficult “writer’s block”, or even just the ebbs and flows of creativity.

I started being a full-time artist in 2020 because of the pandemic, for nearly two years my momentum, creativity and drive was out of this world, I couldn’t keep up with all of my ideas, clients and inspirations! Looking back, it’s truly incredible how many portraits and projects I’ve worked on over the past couple of years…

But that fire slowly began burning out.

It was in the spring of 2022 that I really started hitting the wall- no drive, no inspiration, questioning what I was doing, why I was doing it. Somedays all I did was take a walk and write in my journal.

It wasn’t that I couldn’t do anything, I still had commission work and projects, but there was something missing, and I felt incredibly heavy and exhausted all of the time. My art and my mission is to inspire deeper connections to ourselves, nature, and horses, and during that period, I had no aspiration to inspire anyone.

From May until August was my “creative drought” I’ll call it, I was living in Scotland, and even though it is such a magical place, I was still somehow feeling uninspired. I DAYDREAMED about heading out to a job everyday, knowing what time I start and end work, mingling with the customers in my cafe job where I just chat and serve scones. I wanted that. And if I was in another situation, I may have done it for my sanity, but I was an American temporarily in Scotland and couldn’t legally work there, so I had to keep going.

For a while I tried so hard to push through, just keep grinding away at the projects at hand, but I couldn’t do that to my clients, I couldn’t make their special pieces lack my heart. It’s not to say that I couldn’t draw at all, I did get surges of creative juice, thank goodness, but it wasn’t consistent or reliable.

Then… I surrendered.

I let go.
Let go of the “need to do” and allowed myself to just “be.”

Any projects on my calendar, suddenly weren’t a priority. I covered up my to-do lists and just relieved myself of duties for a while. The pressure that I was putting on myself was too much, and I would get stressed and frustrated and feel guilty for not working. It was a toxic cycle.

I woke up early, read, journaled, went on morning walks, afternoon strolls, wandered into town, went on adventures into the mountains.

Let go. Surrender.

I would walk along the ocean everyday, searching for the metaphors of my creative void in the currents and waves.

And it was always the same advice…

“You must fully surrender… sink down into the darkest depths of the unknown, trusting that you will return, and only then will you come back to the surface.”

And so I did.

It was almost like a recovery, it didn’t flood back all at once, but I felt the rise of inspiration well up inside of me, excitement for my art, my connection to horses, my connection to people slowly but surely returned.

For the past couple of years I’ve tried to be careful with my energy and creative exertion, for fear of exactly what happened. But I think it was inevitable, I don’t think it was just classic burnout, I think of it more like a spiritual test that pushed me into the next phase of my life, my business and even though it was a tough period, I am grateful to have experienced the void in it’s entirety.

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

My mission is to inspire a deeper connection to ourselves, nature, and horses through my art. I work primarily digital these days but I have dabbled in a bit of everything over the years.

My work now revolves around horses and the deeper, more spiritual connection we can have with them, which in turn, only teaches us more about ourselves and our interconnection to nature and others. I also wish to inspire the creative spirit that lives within each of us; EVERYONE is creative or has the ability to express themselves in their own unique ways.

I thrive on variety, I cannot stick to just one thing or else I get bored; therefore my offerings/projects reflect that.

Currently, I create logos for alternative equine businesses (mostly but not limited to) as one of my main services, which was not the direction I saw myself going in at all, but I’m really loving it. I am particularly good at thinking outside the box, so if someone is looking for a business name, or creative way to offer their services, sometimes just brainstorming with me can unlock a lot of ideas!

Whole-Self Portraits are my other passion, I came up with this idea in 2021 and have done almost 70 portraits since! These are intuitive portraits that I create specifically for each person. They answer in depth questions, we have a zoom call, and I read into the energy of the person, then draw up an elaborate portrait that represents their most authentic self from an outside point of view. These portraits inspire greater confidence and encouragement to stand in one’s truest form.

Last year I illustrated my first children’s book about a wild mustang, designed and wrote in an international co-author book about the wisdom of horses, and also illustrated an equine oracle deck! I have a few more big collaborative projects in the works, but hope to do more personal projects in the future.

Over this past year I’ve hosted a number of online Creative Workshops that focus on the interconnections between creativity, women, and horses, and hope to do more of those and expand into other workshops as well. My future goal is to line up more in person retreats in locations around the world, but a lot in the UK, as I’ll be moving to Scotland in 2023 and hope to host more creative retreats that include horses and exploring the beautiful land.

I try to stay authentic and real with my online presence and let my art speak for itself, I am so lucky that I don’t feel like I need to “sell” myself too much, that I can allow my art to resonate and connect me with like minded people around the world.

Is there mission driving your creative journey?

The reason I started sharing my art a few years ago, besides necessity, was to find like-minded people out in the wild world of the internet. My perspectives on how we work with and treat horses in the traditional horse world began to massively shift and it was a difficult awakening, letting go of a lot of concepts that I’d been conditioned to believe about horse-human dynamics. But as I was changing and learning, I was seeking others who were doing the same, I was looking for resources, for support in some way, and I used my art as a beacon.

I would draw and share what I was going through in my own journey, and I began to find a little niche community on the internet which has lead me down so many paths of opportunity since.

My overall mission in my work is simply inspiring creativity and connection. When someone sees my work, I want them to feel the beauty in the world we live in, the magic that lies in the mundane, and the potential of possibility when we open ourselves to a more magical and spiritual way of being. I want the spirit of the horse to come galloping through each piece, to call to people no matter what discipline or background with horses, to go beyond the “norms” and question tradition and the way that things have always been done. A gentle invitation for a deeper connection to everything.

Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?

Like most people, the pandemic shook a lot of things up.

Since graduating from college in 2015, I had been on the move. I traveled through New Zealand, where I met my now husband; he and I did plenty of travels around the world together, I also worked with horses at different ranches and farms, painting on the side here and there. There was a point in time where I was getting serious about making a life at a ranch I was working at, and yet so many factors made it very difficult to make that dream a reality. It took a while, but finally I had to quit and move on. I see those hardships now as nudges that I needed to make a change, but of course that’s always clearer in hindsight.

After leaving that ranch, feeling absolutely free and directionless for a few months, my partner and I traveled through South America for 5 months, not really connected to the current events, and synchronistically left just in time before the borders shut down in March 2020. I had been getting excited about starting to create more art and the idea of doing markets in the summer, trying my hand at being a part-time artist. My “plan” was to get a part-time job to support myself while I experimented with this balance, but of course, no one was hiring at that time.

With a hefty credit card bill and no money, I went out on a limb and bought a Wacom tablet secondhand and hooked it all up, ready to begin this leg of the adventure- turning towards the internet to share my work.

I cannot believe the journey that I’ve been on since those humble beginnings. I’m nowhere near a thriving monetary business, but I survive, I share my work, I always have a list of clients and projects, and I have been blessed to be connected with people everywhere. I have learned so much in just a few years of being a professional, and I know that from here on out, it would be very difficult to work for someone else. The freedom of choosing my schedule, being able to work from wherever, is something I always dreamed about.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.nicadrawsnature.com
• Instagram: nica_draws_nature
• Facebook: Nica Draws Nature