We caught up with the brilliant and insightful AJ Bauers a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

AJ, appreciate you joining us today. Can you talk to us about a project that’s meant a lot to you?

The most meaningful art was the things I created in my mixed media sketchbook/journal.

Like so many people in creative fields, I suffer from depression and anxiety. These days, it is very manageable with the life changes I’ve made, most notably being a departure from a past financial career and medication. But before I took drastic steps to improve my brain, I hated myself and thought the person everyone knew was a veneer that hid the empty, useless person beneath it.

At first, art was about creating a product, something that friends and family could focus on instead of what I thought was a horrible personality. But when I started to gravitate toward art that showed the artist’s personality and their vulnerability, I tried it for myself. Of course, I kept it all hidden at first. This was art I only made for myself. I made art that highlighted the things I hated about myself, I made art that focused on the changes I wanted to make for myself, and I made art that envisioned a better future.

Only within the last two years have I shown this art in public settings, but it was these pages that gave me the courage to be brave and show an emotional truth in my work instead of just fictional stories I so often enjoyed escaping into,

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 guess I first got into art when I won a coloring contest in kindergarten, for being one of the few six-year-olds who could color inside the lines. I’ve enjoyed art throughout my life–I even got a minor in Graphic Design when I got my bachelor’s degree. But I’ve only started to take my career in art seriously within the last few years.

What kickstarted my art path during my adulthood was the monthly drawing challenges during the month of October, where prompt words are provided every day and the artist is encouraged to draw their interpretation of that word, I started in 2019 and I have done it every year since. This really kickstarted my illustrative career, where I drew anything from stickers, to webcomics, to covers for magazines.

In 2023, I started an art and craft business with my sister–The Artsy Crafty Sisters (I’m the Artsy one, my sister is the crafty one). This is when I started to sell my art on a higher demand basis, including art prints, cards, stickers, and my smaller original works of art. In 2024, I entered the fine art gallery scene where I produced, showed, and sold paintings in local North Dakota shows. I even won best in show (both people’s choice and the board of directors’ choice) for a Fall Artistry show at the Bismarck Art and Gallery Association, which proved my whimsical subjects and experimental styles worked on a pop art and fine art level.

What’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative in your experience?

I love how art never tells one story. By far my favorite thing when it comes to gallery shows or talking to people about my art is when the viewer contributes their own feelings and tells the story their brain created when they looked at my art. It’s probably one of the major reasons why I don’t like making art that is exactly true to life. I like a touch of the unreal, an element of surprise, and then have my brain and the viewers’ brains decide why this difference from reality was included.

Is there a particular goal or mission driving your creative journey?

I had two favorite types of books growing up. The first was the read look-and-find books, like “Where’s Waldo?” or the 1993 “Wizard of Oz” search book. I felt I could look at these pages and never stop discovering something new. The second was epistolary books made for children–specifically the “Jolly Postman” series and “The Baby-Sitters Club: Chain Letter.” I loved how I could physically open envelopes on the pages, read letters in different penmanship, and sometimes look at photo strips, drawings, or brochures.

These might have been stories and not strictly visual art, but they inform the same sense of wonder and exploration I want my viewers to experience in my more elaborate pieces. I want people to come back to a painting and discover new details. I want people to handle my mixed media artworks and find flaps and hidden doors that can be opened, I want this not just to be an experience of creation and storytelling for me, but for them as well. It’s a lofty challenge, one that I don’t always meet, but it’s a fun hurdle to jump, even if I don’t always clear it.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: @AJ_Bauers
• Facebook: Art by AJ www.facebook.com/share/1AaTiWQjHQ/?mibextid=wwXlfr