We were lucky to catch up with Amanda Stockton recently and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Amanda thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. How did you come up with the idea for your business?

I actually got started on my professional art journey when I made my first real sale in an effort to raise money to buy a cover for my upcoming novel.

I mostly made art for myself, kept hidden in sketchbooks or journals. Until I started to share my work with family and friends on Facebook. People started asking for prints.

The next steps came after my divorce. As a once stay at home mother turned single unemployed mother, I had to come up with something to carry me through and start my life over again.

I was in a unique position, having built a strong and supportive community on Twitter, to start a business based around my art. I got the chance to share my passion, my heart, my story. Because it is in and with my art that I express my journey. I created a brand around my personal healing journey and it was…terrifying.

I had no idea if it would really work. Sometimes I still wonder. It’s easy to let the negative words of other people and their beliefs about what work and life is supposed to look like sink in and infect the creative spirit.

But. I simply had no other choice. Giving up was not an option.

The last two years have been the most transformative of my life. A lot of time learning, not just by way of trial and error, but observing what other artists are doing. Community, like with most things, is the key.

I got my first invitation to take part in a group art show in 2022, and since then I’ve participated in almost ten shows, and have had my work published in a comic anthology. Opportunities presented by way of community.

My biggest thrill, as an artist, is when people discuss their interpretation of my work. It doesn’t particularly matter if what they see is what my intention was. The point is: they’re looking at my work and it’s speaking to them. They can see themselves in it—or—they see something in it that they connect with.

There is no higher honor as a creative.

And especially when my work is about emotional expression of healing trauma, taking back personal power, and embracing authentic identity.

Amanda, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

I’m a mostly self-taught artist. I primarily paint with acrylics or oils, but I also really love to use charcoals. Charcoals were, in fact, a first love of mine since Crayola crayons. I took a semester of beginner charcoal drawing in community college and was hooked.

My art sorta sat to the side of life for a long time. Dabbling here or there, it was just something I liked to do for myself. Always too afraid to take the plunge of financially investing in painting supplies because—what if I suck?

Eventually I got some cheap paints and started a big canvas portrait of Daenerys Targaryen and shortly after what became my first piece in my Introverted Mutiny series.

The piece was a woman, decimated, skin and bone, exposed ribs exploding with dozens of monarch butterflies. She was an expression of depression, of sorrow, of pain. But more, she was being reborn. She has no face. Her identity unknown. We just see a wreckage and the following bloom of transformation flowing from that ending.

This was the piece my friends and family on Facebook wanted prints of. This was the piece that would really kick off the massive shift in my life.

I sold the painting. Probably massively undersold it. But. I wasn’t trying to be a professional artist. I just really wanted that book cover.

Art has always been a passion of mine. I love art history and art museums and Bob Ross on PBS. It fills me with excitement and joy. And stumbling down this unintended road opened up a whole new world of possibility for me. But it also unlocked parts of myself I had never had a real opportunity to get to know.

Then, when my marriage ended, I had nothing. I went from a stay at home mom to having almost nothing. Hardly a dollar to my name and certainly no career prospects. With no childcare and no other options, I leaned into making art to sell.

People liked what I was making. I’d paint an original and it would sell. I’d paint another and there it went. My proudest moment was when I made my FIRST oil painting, a dagger spearing some strawberries shaped like a skull. I painted a whole series of fruit skulls and the entire series sold within an hour of posting to my Twitter.

I danced and cried. It felt amazing. I was in shock.

Then I started making prints. And painting more. And every painting was an opportunity to tell my own story, to give myself a voice that I’d never really been afforded before.

And now I am thankful every single day that I am on this journey. I am thankful for that first painting that rerouted my life and offered me a direction when I felt so completely lost and alone.

My art, and my community, saved my life.

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

Those two wicked words we all loathe so much: Social Media.

I started off building a community on Twitter. That, as I’ve discussed, is what really helped get me started in the first place.

I built an audience. Something that takes a lot of time and effort, there’s a reason why the big guys have full time employees whose entire job is social media management and marketing.

I also had started to make connections on Instagram. For artists, Instagram is a must have. There’s not really any way around it. But it’s also over saturated, so getting seen is…let’s just say not easy.

But I am not in a place where I’m looking to become an influencer. So, instead, I started following local artists, local art venues, local collectives.

I was invited via Instagram to join a summer skate deck art show at Art Design Exchange (ADX). Which introduced me to other local artists. And these are the spaces where your resources multiply.

The more local creators I followed, the more events, conventions, markets, etc that I began to discover.

Over the years I’ve met people who have paid me to design tattoos, paint their adult kids as super heroes, even—coming full circle—design their book covers.

Utilizing social media, building a community, and putting your work and yourself out to the world are, in my admittedly still young career, the best possible ways to grow organically and people will find you.

Can you open up about how you funded your business?

Honestly, when I started I had very little to no money. I had to start and then take whatever I got in sales and turn it back into investment.

The best and most important thing to remember is when you’re starting something new, from scratch, on a budget of zero dollars, is to start small, to start simple.

I primarily used supplies I already had and had to learn how to price my work. Not only fairly for my clients but also for myself and the health of my budding business.

Then that money would get reinvested into new supplies, better packages/mailing supplies, and eventually big (for me) items like an iPad.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.BatwordsMedia.com
• Instagram: Instagram.com/batwomanda
• Twitter: Twitter.com/batwomanda

Image Credits
All photos taken by Amanda Stockton