We were lucky to catch up with Alanna Rivera recently and have shared our conversation below.

Alanna, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Earning a full time living from one’s creative career can be incredibly difficult. Have you been able to do so and if so, can you share some of the key parts of your journey and any important advice or lessons that might help creatives who haven’t been able to yet?

I’ve been working full-time as a fine artist for three years now, and it has been a difficult and rewarding journey. I may have my Master in Fine Art now, but I am a self-taught artist with a background in English and Spanish literature. I like to emphasize to aspiring full-time creatives that my path wasn’t linear and a lot of what has made me successful takes time. I did not always identify as an artist, though I always made art. I grew up in the Washington, D.C. area where my mother was a lawyer and many other friends’ parents were lawyers, FBI agents, or lobbyists, so it was hard to see what it would be like to have a career in a creative field.

I began my journey as an AmeriCorps member in 2013, serving in a high school in rural Virginia, helping high schoolers figure out their next steps once they graduated. While I was helping the students find their paths, they helped me find my own. I realized that while I was working, I was happiest when I was connecting with people and making art. It took me two years to muster up the courage to apply to a graduate program for fine art at the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA). I applied and was accepted into the MFA Community Art program at MICA and moved to Baltimore after finishing my two years of service as an AmeriCorps member.

Still feeling like an imposter, my work became grounded in my own search for my identity as an artist and a half-white, half-Latina from the D.C. area. Going back to school for art was crucial for my development, because for the first time, I had friends who were also artists. I finally understood what it felt like to be part of a community of artists and creatives and these friendships empowered my own art making. After graduating from grad school in 2017, I took on the role of a teaching artist at my former preschool in Washington, D.C. My MFA program had a strong emphasis on going back and helping your own community, and I realized I was in a unique position where I was able to return to one of my school communities and offer a new perspective.

As many people know, the education system in the United States is drastically broken, and this affects educators no matter where they are teaching. It was difficult to leave my students, knowing that there may not be an art program after I left, but after two years, it was time for me to try to do something different and new that filled my creative soul. I didn’t mean to begin earning a full-time living from my creative work right after I left teaching, I just kept accepting more commissions and more private gigs until eventually my schedule was full. After about a year of working solely on commission, selling my art, and beginning a mural project, I realized I had stumbled into a full-time career as a creative. Three years later, I’m still excited to make new work, take on new projects, and have also begun working as an event organizer for art markets and comic zine festivals.

Knowing what I know now, I don’t think I could have sped up my process of becoming a full-time creative and I don’t think I would have wanted to. I learned valuable lessons about boundaries, self-worth, and self-fulfillment in all of the steps I took to get where I am today. While I’ve been full-time for three years, I try to think in terms of decades, not years, and I am thrilled for the journey I have ahead.

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

My name is Alanna Rivera and I am a bi, half-white, half Latina fine artist living in the Washington, D.C. area. The primary focus of my business is providing custom portrait paintings for my clients. I started my art career painting dog portraits, because I have always had a passion for dogs. These painted portraits began to grow in range from portraits of pets and children to antique cars and boats. I like to celebrate what my clients cherish most in these portraits and try to capture the joy they feel towards these people, animals, or objects. I capture my own joy by painting plein air or working from photos I’ve taken in my studio, where I focus on small moments of calm and normalcy through landscapes.

What sets me apart from other artists is my extreme versatility. I work in a variety of media (oil, acrylic, watercolor, gouache, ink) and can paint a variety of subject matter, but I also work as a creative event organizer to create more opportunities for local artists and small businesses. My art has always been a way for me to connect meaningfully with others and when I’m doing well I like to share the opportunities I have with other creatives and makers. After selling at events over the years, I realized that event organizers were missing an artist’s perspective when creating opportunities for artists. As an organizer and an artist, my events are artist-centric to make sure that I’m making the most out of the makers’ time and energy. I’m currently planning an art market, that I founded, for local makers in Arlington, VA on November 12 and 19, the Cherrydale Holiday Art Market, and am planning on working with local comic artists to create a comic zine event in the spring of 2023. My goal is to be part of a thriving, vibrant, and diverse arts community in the DC, Maryland, and Virginia area.

We often hear about learning lessons – but just as important is unlearning lessons. Have you ever had to unlearn a lesson?

A difficult lesson I’ve had to unlearn is that just because you are working different hours than the majority of those around you, it doesn’t mean you’re less successful or less hardworking. I’ve always been a “night-owl” and my best ideas and my most creative hours happen late at night. I always felt guilty for needing to sleep in the next day so I could work hard into the night. There’s a lot of stigma around people who work outside of the typical 9-5 schedule or who aren’t up early working. It has taken me years to recognize that I need to listen to my body in order to work at my full potential. This means that I save my more creative problem-solving work for the evening and do more ritual tasks (bookkeeping, taxes, etc) during the day. When my body tells me I need to rest, I try to rest, even when it feels like I shouldn’t. I take naps as I need to. I work in 2-4 hour bursts. I eat when I’m hungry.

That’s what has saved me from burn-out.

Is there something you think non-creatives will struggle to understand about your journey as a creative? Maybe you can provide some insight – you never know who might benefit from the enlightenment.

I think what non-creatives struggle to understand about working as a full-time creative, is that while I’m constantly aware of my finances, I am not motivated by earning money. I am an artist because this is my purpose and the way that I exist in the world, not because I have a financial goal. My art making is more closely tied to my identity and isn’t just a career I chose. it’s how I connect with those around me. When I talk to people who are consultants, lawyers, or computer engineers, they immediately point out that “there isn’t a lot of money in art.” What they actually mean, is that there aren’t a lot of steady income opportunities in the art world. Most artists end up teaching or free-lancing to create their base income from art, which makes a career in art more difficult, but not impossible. We live in a society that greatly values art and is constantly surrounded by it through movies, music, graphic design, dance, etc, yet we don’t encourage artists to invest in themselves and their art-making. Instead, we encourage people to pick “sensible” careers that don’t align with their innermost goals and that make them absolutely miserable.

What I’m doing is difficult and I am in a privileged position to do it. Being able to pursue art full-time is a privilege and not everyone is in a position to do that, but they should be allowed to. The reason they’re not able to is because we live in a society that is out of balance, where art is not valued as highly as it should be given how much and how often it is consumed. As a full-time creative, I am working hard to not only create opportunities for myself to create a sustainable art career, but also for other creatives. No one deserves to live in an emotional deficit.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.alannarivera.com
• Instagram: www.instagram.com/ariverastudios
• Facebook: www.facebook.com/AlannaRiveraStudios
• Other: TikTok: @ariverastudios Additional instagram: @baileyclarencecomic

Image Credits
All images are my own.