We were lucky to catch up with Lexi K. Nilson recently and have shared our conversation below.

Lexi K., appreciate you joining us today. We’d love to hear about the things you feel your parents did right and how those things have impacted your career and life.

There was always play dough in the cupboard alongside a tray of scrap paper leftover from my dad’s fax machine and a bin of crayons, markers, colored pencils, etc. In many ways, it feels like I was raised by that cupboard and the way my parents kept it stocked like an evergreen nudge to make things and celebrate my own mind.

When I was younger, I took for granted the time and energy both my mom and dad devoted to creativity. I watched both my mom, educated as a schoolteacher but born with impeccable taste for interior design and my dad, working as a physician but dazzled by photography invest themselves in art and celebrating the joy and beauty around them. It’s taken years for me to realize how courageous that was to do and how blessed I am to have been taught by their examples. Without them, it would have been much harder for me to prioritize creativity and pursue an artistic life.

An iconic period of my childhood was in the 9th grade when my mom settled an ongoing battle of my lacking bedroom cleanliness by allowing me to do whatever I wanted to my room so long as I kept the floor tidy. Something I must have learned being raised by an interior designer is the impact that physical spaces have on spirituality and before our agreement, I remember feeling out of place and stifled in that room. I think it was a big sacrifice to hand over an orderly and well-designed corner of our home to a fiery and free-spirited 14 year old, but I’m grateful everyday for the sacred time I spent growing in a room that grew with and around me.
I called it my wonderland and filled it with hanging tree branches, giant paper maché creations, garlands, floor to ceiling murals, painted quotes, glitter, decoupaged magazine clippings, self portraits in every medium, and anything that sparked a fancy in me. It was chaotic and colorful, wild and meaningful, and while I think it mortified my mom at times, I never doubted her love and support for my creative growth as a person. Since then, I’ve learned the importance of keeping a sketchbook and honoring ideas by recording thoughts and fancies regularly. Without realizing it, that’s exactly what my bedroom was for me and I think it nurtured an insatiable curiosity and wonder that feed the work I do today as a storyteller.

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

I am an illustrator/writer/designer based in Baltimore, Maryland who explores magic in mundane moments to create soft spaces to land. With a keen sense for sophisticated whimsy, my work reflects the wonder and joy found amidst the small moments of the everyday. While I am currently pursuing bookmaking as a writer and illustrator, my practice extends to editorial work, hand-lettering, portraiture, and occasionally making/selling illustrated wares on my Etsy shop: LexiKStudio. My work is an extension of the way I engage with life and demonstrates my love for connection to the spaces I fill and share with others. As a professional illustrator, I bring that passion and zest to every project and hope to build even deeper connections with my audience.

My parents always encouraged my siblings and I to make things, from clay sculptures and marker drawings to choreographed dances and basement play performances. Their own artistic pursuits taught me to value art and its invaluable role in problem-solving and appreciating life at greater depths. As much as I loved drawing, however, whenever people asked if I wanted to be an artist someday, I said no and I remember being so confused because art didn’t feel like something I did or wanted to do, it felt like something I already was.

In high school, however, I learned about Illustration as a college major and decided to pursue it without really knowing what it meant. Since then, I’ve earned two degrees in Illustration/Illustration Practice, published/self-published several books: Jane Was Here (Hardie Grant UK 2020), Dogs I Met in the Elevator (self-published 2022), and worked on projects for various clients including Hardie Grant UK, The Washington Post, Living Legacy Foundation, Writers in Baltimore Schools, and The Deseret Magazine.

What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?

A people-pleaser by nature, I excelled in academics and always loved school. For the majority of my life, there have been clear bars of “excellence” and I’ve been able to jump over them (with style, sure, but I was jumping no less) to achieve “success”. This mentality and way of living bred into me a hard work ethic and flair for engaging with my audience, but time and time again it left me feeling empty and exhausted at the end of the day when everyone else goes home. If I make only for others, I dry up and shut down. Work cannot exist without play and play requires trusting instincts more than relying on grades or praise. Play is about life and living, work is about money; both are necessary for a fulfilling life and making contributions to society.

I’ve learned this lesson throughout my life in different forms from good professors and loving mentors. Most recently it was from Kim Hall, my 1st year grad mentor/teacher at Maryland Institute College of Art. I struggled in the program because I kept wanting her to tell me what she was looking for in the assignments, but she maintained a sage, mystic pedagogic approach that pushed me to “fail” in every sense of what I had thought failure was. I got little to no praise compared to what I was used to and felt emptied by every assignment because of how purposeless they felt to me. Grades were assigned based on participation and not technical ability, so the challenge was not about how high I could jump, in fact it wasn’t about jumping at all. Eventually, I learned to think through assignments and respond to my own instincts rather than what I thought was expected of me. It was not about the grade anymore, it was about my will to create and by replacing a desire to please with a sense for my own intrigue, I made more meaningful work that informed not only my practice, but my whole existence. Not everything that comes from following my instincts/joy makes sense to other people or directly brings wild monetary success, but it does keep me excited and curious enough about life to keep making. That energy is what keeps me going as a professional, as an artist, and as a human being.

Is there something you think non-creatives will struggle to understand about your journey as a creative?

Creativity, the way I understand it, is the translation of personal experiences and observations into connection. It requires depth and introspection as well as an awareness of others in order to create meaningful engagement between the creative work and the viewer. As an artist pursuing creativity professionally, I am called to mix work with pleasure as well as my personal life with a public audience and it can be emotionally brutal. Who I am–the way I think and how I express my thoughts and feelings–becomes the work I do. Whether it is for clients or for myself, all of it is on display and in the face of peoples’ judgment, kind or hurtful, I persist in working through and sharing my stories.

Because my profession is an extension of my emotions, I’m never really “off work”. I’m always processing life and translating it into art, whether I get paid for it or not. It’s for this reason that those who pursue art as a career rarely do it for the money. We do it because we can’t fathom spending the majority of our lives doing anything else and, somehow, with that passion, faith, and determination for a guide, we make it work.

I think that some people who meet me and hear that I am an illustrator think that I have a “cute” job where I spend all day dancing around with a paint brush in hand and singing animals at my window without a care in the world. What they don’t think about are the hours I’ve spent learning to draw or see the subtlety of color and light in context. They don’t consider that in spite of the pain and sorrow I feel and see around me, I have to choose over and over again to believe that beauty and joy are essential to the progress of humanity. And they can be painfully unaware of the mental, emotional, and physical strength it takes to wonder on a regular basis and then have the courage to defend the power of imagination and child-like whimsy as a professional to people who pretend to “know better”.

I am grateful everyday for the people in my life who have cheered me on in this life-long pursuit of creation in the face of destruction. It’s my hope that I can make things that help even those who don’t understand why I do it to feel the tender, loving, and living breath of humanity and the connections we share to something bigger.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://lexiknilson.com
• Instagram: @lexiknilson
• Other: Etsy Shop : LexiKStudio : https://www.etsy.com/shop/LexiKStudio?ref=seller-platform-mcnav