We were lucky to catch up with Alivia Knight recently and have shared our conversation below.

Alivia, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Did you always know you wanted to pursue a creative or artistic career? When did you first know?

I grew up in a creative household. All four of my siblings and my parents were all creatively talented. After Highschool I was meant to go to an art school, a really expensive art school. For what? I had no idea.

So there I was freshly 18, about to graduate and sign my life away to paying off a house sized student loan to a school I wasn’t even sure I wanted to go to. I remember not being sure about a lot then, the person I was dating, the people I hung out with, the choices I made, but I knew I was not ready to go to college.

I knew spending four years creating on someone else’s time schedule was not going to be ideal for my art career. I also knew, dedicating my life to something I wasn’t a hundred percent sure of was not going to be good for me. So, I didn’t go. I spent the next two years working at dead end office jobs.

About a year into my second office job, the pandemic hit and the office closed causing us to work remotely. During this time I got into the routine of finishing my work early and spending the rest of my day painting. Which meant by the time the office opened back up, I was not prepared to go back to a mundane 8 hour day. The isolation of the pandemic had also caused my social anxiety to sky rocket making small talk with my coworkers unbearable. A couple of days back in the office, I had to have the uncomfortable conversation with my bosses that data entry was killing me slowly and a creative lifestyle was calling to me.

After I left the office job, I started creating logos for small businesses, painting commissions for family and friends and creating comics for private businesses. In between projects I picked up DoorDashing and babysitting. I went from a 9-5 working for someone else to 24/7 for myself and I haven’t looked back since.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

I am mostly an acrylic based artist with my most recent acrylic series being dedicated to the healing during the wake of my divorce. These were created in an effort to understand the decisions I made that got me into a loveless marriage.

I think what sets me apart from others is my use of violent colors and childlike imagery to make the viewer uncomfortable with decisions made as an adult led by their inner child. I also chose to use a lot of symbolism that makes us question the bounds of society and how we respond to unspoken rules and regulations. I would hope that viewers of my art would be filled with a sense of longing and nostalgia that begs them to get in touch with their child-selves.

Primarily I work on getting this message across through paintings, although I have begun dabbling in new art forms, like music and writing, to better understand it myself. Which means soon I will have so much more art for you to consume.

What do you think is the goal or mission that drives your creative journey?

My goal in my creative journey is to create a space for conversation to unpack childhood trauma we all walk with. So many people spend their life running from their childhood only to recreate it once more when they are an adult.

I am of the belief that childhood trauma needs to be de-stigmatized. If societally we all recognized that no one leaves childhood unscathed, perhaps there would be more understanding and compassion to everyone. Furthermore if we take childhood trauma out of the ‘psychiatry box’ and it becomes a lesson in understanding why everyone is different, we might find we have more patience for what we cannot control in others.

I hope to use my art as a catalyst for these conversations.

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

For me, the most rewarding aspects would have to be creating something that speaks to someone and creating something that inspires someone else.

I’ve spent so much of my life alone in my own head that when I create something and someone has a visible response to it, it reminds me that while I cried alone to create this – I wasn’t the only one who needed the outcome. I’ve also spent so much time mimicking great artists to create my style that when someone takes to creating something similar to one of my own pieces, I am shocked. Not because I don’t want someone to copy my art but because I am so proud of myself for getting to a place that a young artist strives to be at.

Both of these are rewards that are vital in helping me to continue to create.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.aliviaknight.com/
• Other: Diary of a Struggling Artist https://substack.com/@aliviaknight