We were lucky to catch up with Amber Harmon Whitworth recently and have shared our conversation below.

Amber, appreciate you joining us today. When did you first know you wanted to pursue a creative/artistic path professionally?

I’ve been drawing since the first moment I could grip a writing utensil. My mom dutifully saved all my earliest recognizable drawings, including a hot dog, Buzz Lightyear, and a cat where I filled every square millimeter of the paper with color.
From elementary school through high school, I got in trouble for drawing too much. It was (almost) the only thing I ever got into trouble for! Avoiding my homework to work on a comic book, getting my sketchbooks taken away by teachers, getting scolded for making my classmates laugh with my doodles. Art made me happier than practically anything else. It was my escape; my extra language. I loved hearing people fawn over my work. I was quite good, and extremely motivated. There was no question that it was always going to be part of my life.
In high school, junior year is the year that representatives from all sorts of universities and trade schools set up their tables, and you start getting handed pamphlets and seeing presentations on future careers. You start getting “steered” toward a future that adults and mentors think will make you successful. They show you a list of potential vocations and the average salary for each. “Artists don’t make much money, and the work is unreliable,” they said. I was a smart girl who was also quite good at science, and I wanted to make money (who doesn’t?) and so I chose to go to college with a major in biology.
Looking back, I think it’s incredible that no one shook me by the shoulders and told me I would be stupid not to start down a professional artist’s path from the beginning. Practically no other career is as flexible, scalable, fit-into-your-ever-changing-life-able, as art. Perhaps I was selectively deaf to good advice (I’m definitely known to be) but I plowed right ahead with that biology major… leading to a very messy start to my higher education. I hated every second of that first semester.
By the time I got my head on straight and switched my major to illustration, I was married. A couple semesters later, I had a baby on the way. The next semester, I was a brand new mom. Suddenly, keeping up the pace toward my BFA was a much less realistic goal. The studio classes I was taking were close to 3 hours long, and when you’re breastfeeding, that just doesn’t work.
The moment I completely withdrew from university to be a stay at home mom, something suddenly changed inside me. It felt like my spirit woke up. I had never wanted to paint – to make – to create – so DESPERATELY in my life. With my little baby underfoot or napping (usually napping) I would clear off the dining table in our tiny apartment, set up my easel and palette, and paint something. Then I’d do it again that evening (after cleaning up so we could eat dinner) and then again the next day. Every day, I continued. I threw about half of my work away. That’s the way it is – a whole lot of your work sucks. I asked for art supplies for every birthday and Christmas. I posted what I liked to Instagram.
After six months, I bought my first domain name and set up a website. THAT was a leap of faith – the cost of a website isn’t much to our budget now, but back then, $140 a year was a significant chunk of our funds. I didn’t even know if I would sell any paintings. I thought, I’ll have a blog on my site too, then I can make money from affiliate ads and junk. (That never happened – the mental load of figuring that out turned my brain to mush).
I experimented with the pricing of my work. At times, way too high, and nothing would sell; other times, embarrassingly low, and I’d be giving my paintings away for twenty bucks. DON’T DO THAT!
I continued a slow, very unsteady upward trajectory with my art for the next several years. It takes courage to keep it up even when you know in your bones that it’s what you’re meant to do. Being a stay-at-home parent presented significant barriers to my creativity; when I could find the time, I was out of energy. When I had ideas, I was busy. When I yearned for alone time, I was riddled with regret that I wasn’t making more time for my art or my business. When I made time for my art or my business, other areas of my life suffered from the lack of time I was devoting to them. Comparison was a constant drain on my creative energy.
But my art itself? It was life-giving. The colors filled me up. My paintings saw me through. Every time I was able to make something, it felt like an oxygenating breath – I felt like ME.
And in the moments where it counted, when I teetered on the edge of wanting to give up, my family and friends always came forward with encouraging words, and I found the strength to keep going.
My two daughters are older now. While they still need me plenty, there’s been an emancipation of some of my time, and I am able to devote more waking hours to my creativity. I think I’ve painted more during the past 3 years than the previous 7; perhaps my whole life. I’ve illustrated a book and a card game. I’ve been commissioned by friends, complete strangers, and even the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. My work is hanging in homes all over the world. And I want to scream out my window that I’M JUST GETTING STARTED! It’s exhilarating to know that I have my whole life ahead of me to create the work I want to, but sobering to know that tomorrow is not guaranteed.

Amber, 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?

Wow, these questions are hard! I am laughing as I try to define myself here.
I am a freelance artist in both digital and traditional media. That means I illustrate and make art on my iPad, but I also create art in an art studio with things like oils, watercolors, gouache, colored pencil, etc.
I mainly create work that I am in complete control of – I come up with ideas and make them. I paint landscapes, animals, contemporary portraits, according to what delights me. But I also do commissions – work where someone else tells me what to do, within my boundaries. I’ve created work for some very interesting prompts! One stranger (who is now my friend) asked me to paint the view out of the front door of her family’s house that they had lost to the Paradise fire in California in 2017.
In 2020, I painted a massive collection of paintings around a central theme of family history. I didn’t sell many of them, but I’m still quite proud of the amount of beautiful work I was able to make, and the depths to which I explored an idea that inspired me. I still get goosebumps when I look at photos of the Vineyard Collection.
Going forward, I am shifting my focus more toward illustration, and I want to illustrate children’s books.

Any insights you can share with us about how you built up your social media presence?

Social media completely revolutionized the creative field. Where artists used to have to rely on galleries and magazines to represent them, and their ability to be their own mouthpiece was extremely limited, Instagram and Facebook came along and said, “the sky’s the limit.” You can make the weirdest, most niche thing that makes you happy, and the people all over the world who are also delighted by it CAN FIND YOU.
Since I started my artist Instagram account in 2015, the algorithm has changed innumerable times. Each change sends a ripple of trepidation through the creative community that relies on their reach to make a living. Artists feel the need to keep up with trends and stay visible. Most recently, artists have also had to become videographers, thanks to the rise and prioritization of Reels. It can feel overwhelming, and really get in the way of your creative flow, to stress over this.
You don’t need thousands of followers to be able to make a living. A larger following can get you more attention, but what you really need are enough of the RIGHT followers – people who will support you, who will keep coming back, who you can rely on to share your work, find you the next opportunity, buy your product or book or whatever. That type of following doesn’t come from going viral. It comes from consistently showing up and posting over months and years.
It’s also important to remember not to rely solely on social media. Your reach can get choked at any time, you account can get stolen or banned, you can post and post and get engagement but not action. Diversify and find opportunities locally. Build an email list – that’s much more reliable than social media for letting people know what you’re up to.
I’ve been using Instagram for my art for nearly a decade and I have about 1500 followers. That might not seem like much, but when I share my work, I am able to sell it pretty consistently, because if my followers don’t buy it, they love to share it. Most of them have been following me for years. They know me and want to support me.

Can you share your view on NFTs? (Note: this is for education/entertainment purposes only, readers should not construe this as advice)

Since they became a thing, I haven’t seen a single legitimate reason to give them a try. If someone reaches out to me to buy my work as an NFT, I immediately know it’s a scam. It’s just another reason I laugh when I think about how much the art world has changed because of the internet.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.amberwhitworth.com
• Instagram: @amberwhitworthart

Image Credits

All images were created and/or taken by Amber Whitworth and no rights of any others were infringed.