We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Andressa Poti. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Andressa below.

Andressa, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today When did you first know you wanted to pursue a creative/artistic path professionally?

Having art as an active part of my life didn’t come in a very clear path, it had so many twists and turns until it became my passion and my pursuit. As many kids I grew up enjoying being involved in creative activities and doing a lot of crafty things with my mom and having the best time, but the thought of having art as part of my day to day life was more of a constant after I turned sixteen and came to the U.S.A as an exchange student. I remember getting enrolled into art classes and being quite skeptical about it, as my exposure to art in school was very little growing up but I thought it could be something fun to do while learning a new language and making new friends. Back then it felt like discovering a whole new sense in a depth that I hadn’t before.

When I went back to my home country I knew that it meant soon I’d have to make a big decision as to which major I wanted to pursue. Back then, art was never much of an option for a lot of us, it felt like art majors weren’t taken seriously or you needed to make your college decision based on future finances rather than your passion to guarantee a comfortable life. I remember signing up for some art schools to just not following through with my applications in fear of all of those reasons, so I applied to go to school for industrial design instead which to me it felt like a happy hopeful compromise as maybe I’d still get to use my drawing skills, little did I know computers would become my greatest pen and paper enemies and half the time in college I’d find myself enrolled in extra curricular art classes with the art majors for all of my academic years!

Four years later I left my country and came to the U.S.A to be with my partner, and because my hours in college weren’t transferable I decided to go through a career change, so I went to school to be a hairstylist and worked in the field for a bit. Even though doing hair brought me joy as it fed my creative needs I still felt constricted and wasn’t really sure why, by then the thought of doing art in the most traditional of forms stopped crossing my mind, it was like art had become a stranger for those few years!

All of that leads us to the year that changed a lot for a lot of us, 2020. I couldn’t work as most, so my time was spent with my husband and my dogs playing boardgames, video chatting with my family, worrying about all of the things happening in the world but trying to make the best of it. One day, I get a call from Teddy, which was my American host-dad, saying he remembered I used to paint back as an exchange student and asking if I could paint his mother’s home she was raised in in Mexico, so of course as I had all the time in the world I instantly went online and impulse-purchased all of the tools that I needed and didn’t need to get that painting going… and boy was I excited! So I did that and then did some more, until I opened a little Etsy account to share my Covid creations, all meanwhile waiting to return to working as a hairstylist.

The world started going back to some normalcy, and as I readied to go back into the workforce we made the decision to leave Pennsylvania and move to South Carolina. In South Carolina my license to work as a hairstylist wasn’t transferable so yet again I found myself between a crossroad, being pushed to having to start over, finding something of my own, and right there and then was when I finally realized I not only wanted to, but I needed to pursue a creative path professionally, the path that had always presented itself to me but I always found ways to push it aside. Art had brought life into our home when the world turned quiet, I had the support of people that loved me, so making that leap felt right. Maybe I could’ve chosen that path when I was 18, but perhaps I needed to experience every route that wasn’t going to work before I was able to fully pour myself into the right one that could work.

Andressa, 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?

It was the beginning of autumn in 2020 once I got back into painting, around that same time I started enjoying going on nature hikes to look for colorful fall leaves. Being able to have trails so close to home during a pandemic allowed me to create even more of an appreciation for the outdoors, so painting anything inspired by those surroundings came naturally. One day I decided I wanted to experiment painting on the fall leaves that I had collected, so I would take small videos of the painting process, of each trial and error and share them with friends on social media, slowly more friends and family got curious about what I was making and that gave me more confidence in myself and created so much room for self-discovery and conversations, having that interaction and talking about art with the people that were going through the similar things as we were during that year was very healing and special and it only made my love and curiosity for the art world grow stronger.

It also had become a passion of mine to test out different and more natural forms of media to use for my paintings, I spent quite some time experimenting on wood slabs, textiles, handmade cotton paper while still making great use of canvas. My painting style had started to build on its own slow pace and I could tell as time passed each brush stroke started to become more intentional to fit the materials I was using to paint on. My love for colors also started becoming more apparent, they would allow me to express myself and how I felt. I believe that maybe growing up in a place where colors were always so vibrant and abundant shaped in me a big appreciation and a need to prioritize them in my paintings in hopes that I could make people feel the same way about those shapes and colors as I do.

When I moved to South Carolina the scenery around me drastically changed, so naturally my paintings also started to shift. Where once there were mountains, pine trees and crooked trails, now I had to find inspiration elsewhere which led me to find it around the winding marshes and the ocean. My brushstrokes started to adapt as well and take influence from the fluidity in the waters and the seasonal stormy skies that fascinated me a lot! There was so much to see and so much to love here, I wanted to paint the Lowcountry in a different perspective, bringing more of a moody view showcasing all of those heavy clouds and deep colored waters. Several months after I began taking inspiration from the Lowcountry I took the biggest leap yet and started to do art full time, which also helped me insert myself and connect with a community in a city I was brand new to. People here were so welcoming and the idea of being able to share with them the perspective I have of their home was very nerve-racking, but it felt right to paint the beauty that I found in different aspects of living here in the hopes that someone would relate to my creations as well. Things felt like they were falling into place, I was proud of how far I came, I felt thankful for all of the places I had lived before that helped me shape my passion and thankful for the place I’m at now that allows me to find inspiration to continue to create and evolve.

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

An aspect I love and find very rewarding about it is the ability your creations have to connect people, you are able learn what moves them through their reactions when they see your paintings, and everyone seems to have such different reactions as no one’s interpretation will ever be the same as the next person, so it gets very exciting to see what different aspects of your painting moves each person and why, and that also makes for the best conversations.

What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?

I had this idea that most artists should already know their “style” from day one, that it should come natural to know what makes your paintings yours and no one else’s. I struggled to adjust that mindset and wish I would have been more patient with myself. I spent so much time frustrated with the fact that I didn’t feel consistent within my own art. Bouncing between styles and the feeling of failing at it is completely normal if not essential to getting closer to what will one day feel the most original and true to you. Finding a style takes time, practice, and not only that but takes living through life and figuring out what fuels you in the real world and how you can translate that into your canvas. If you stay too stuck looking at other artist’s creations in hopes to find your own it will be hard to move forward, as their creations came from their own individual life experiences, their highs and lows and all of the challenges in between that were only meant for them to live through.
It became easier when I opened myself to the idea that I will be constantly evolving my art and what makes it feel true to me, as what felt true to me in the last few years may not feel the same to me in 10 years, so once I realized that there was very little control I had on every changing tide within my path I was able to allow myself to let go of that pressure and appreciate every wildly different stage that I went through and will still go through to build myself as an artist to the best potential I can.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.artandatlas.com
• Instagram: @andressapotiart

Image Credits
Portrait photographs by Wendy Carey Photography