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

Alright, Anna Rose thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Learning the craft is often a unique journey from every creative – we’d love to hear about your journey and if knowing what you know now, you would have done anything differently to speed up the learning process.

A lot of people can probably think back to when you experienced the first great piece of art that really made am impression on you. For some it might have been a song, for others, a piece of writing. For me, it was always paintings that popped out in my mind as the apex of art. I grew up in a predominantly Mexican immigrant neighborhood of Chicago, and the first paintings that really made an impression on me were the hand painted billboards painted on steel overpasses on the west side. As a kid, I would use paintings on the sides of buildings and overpasses as visual landmarks to tell how far we were from home. This first reference point of art, the public art, legitimate or illegitimate, has shaped the way I tell stories with paint. To be honest, learning how to paint came naturally, and took a lot of trial and error. Just a lot of hours put into the craft. But I’ve always been kind of stubborn and petty around my painting – ironically enough I dropped out of my painting class at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. The first class we were stretching canvases and the instructor was going through how we were going to be painting still life and I was just not into it. To be honest, I probably felt a great wave of imposter syndrome more than anything. Like, if I failed at this painting class, the medium I was accepted into the school for, then I fail, period. I did learn how to stretch a canvas though. And that is one of those decisions I regret, not because I didn’t go on to become a kick-ass painter, but because it was made out of fear. Since then I have learned how to be terrible at something, and that skill comes from thousands of hours logged, not some divine talent.

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?

My name is Anna Rose Castellanos, and I am a professional artist. My fine art business, Rosebud Studio, was founded in 2022 in Huntsville, AL. Since then, I have slowly grown my business to gain collectors from around the country. I got into painting as a high school student and built my portfolio to apply to art school. I attended The School of the Art Industry of Chicago in 2011 -2012 before dropping out to travel. My years living in Nicaragua, then Spain were full of inspiration for how different cultures incorporate art into their everyday lives and the cities they build. My passion for painting resurfaced in 2020 and became a tool for self reflection following the birth of my daughter, my transition into motherhood, and my reckoning with living as a single mom. A sudden move from my home town of Chicago to my mother’s hometown of Huntsville, Alabama tore down all the comfort and stability I had built for myself. I was completely out of my element, growing a new life, and teeming with this creative energy that may have driven me mad if I didn’t find a way to let it out. My paintings are a meditation on any emotions that need releasing. They chew on problems too big or ambiguous to brainstorm out loud. They are whispers I can’t bring myself to speak. It is always a mixture of surprise and relief when someone connects to your art, as personal as it is. To me, that shows how connected our experiences are, how intensely needed art is to allow us space to breathe into the emotional pockets we close ourselves off from throughout the day. The art I make is created out of a need to work through some big feelings, then I let it go and share it with the world.

What can society do to ensure an environment that’s helpful to artists and creatives?

Simply showing up for other creatives is the quickest way to becoming a more fulfilled and inspired creative yourself. I think there is a level of competition in our society that pins us against one another and encourages us to fight for limited spots at the top of our field. But it doesn’t have to be that way! If you love an artist from afar who is on a similar path as you and you’re tempted to see as competition, I encourage you to go to their shows! Buy their art! Comment how much you rock with their pieces. This opens up so many more doors than feeling less than or discouraged because someone else appears to be finding success at a difference pace or in a different space than you. So many of my connections in the art scene, whether it was in Chicago or Huntsville, has come from introducing myself and loving on what people create! It sheds this bogus sense of comparison among peers and instead promotes collaboration, the sharing of ideas, and just as important, sharing how to overcome challenges in the art world.

To anyone looking to support creatives, there is so much you can do to support the arts in your community. Showing up is always number one. Make the effort to attend gallery openings, big or small. Support live music and buy directly from artists. Most of all, start paying creatives their dues – dues being money, specifically. Pay us in cash, hire us with your corporate budgets to add some soul and beauty to your spaces and events. Use your loved-ones birthdays and holidays as opportunities to find local art to support. These kinds of gifts are two-fold; a gift for the special people in your life and a true gift to artists. You wouldn’t believe how many “successful” artists who are “making it” still rely on your purchases to pay our bills.

And lastly, those in positions of power, do what you can to amplify the voices of artists, especially in communities of color. Artists are the speakerboxxx that amplifies voices of oppressed people, confronts injustices, and tunes people in to the realities of people different than them. Invest in youth art programs. Invest in public art. Invest in spaces that have no agenda beyond representing the communities they serve. Incorporate art into city planning; into civil engineering; into transportation design. Give the billboards to the artists and see how our communities begin to connect to one another more. Art is such a powerful tool and absolutely essential for creates thriving communities.

Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?

When I moved to Huntsville, I lost a lot of my art pieces and most of my supplies. It was kind of a grab what you can carry situation, and made me thankful that we don’t need possessions to flourish in life. That said, I felt this sense of loss for all of the pieces of art that ended up who knows where. I’d like to think the art I had to leave outside of my Chicago apartment was picked up by people who were thrilled to bring them home. Starting totally fresh is always a challenge, even when it comes with opportunities to do things differently. It took me a few months to feel inspired to create something again. But when I did, I couldn’t stop. I had this desire to replenish what I had lost. I wanted to make up for the art that I never got photos of, that never got finished. But this challenge turned into an important lesson for me. Artists can get real high sitting in a room full of finished works, surrounded by their own masterpieces. But sitting in a blank room with nothing to show for yourself is a difficult space, and headspace, to create in. This is where I learned how to make despite feeling unmotivated, uninspired, or disinterested. I would force myself to work and slowly I began to feel like what I was making matched up with what I was seeing in my mind – at least more than the piece before. I think that’s what all of us are trying to capture as artists – that flash of an idea, for all the world to see. Art is such a powerful tool and absolutely essential for creating thriving communities.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.rosebudstudio.art/
• Instagram: @rosebud__studio
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61555995127087
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/anna-castellanos-2a49a013b

Image Credits
All image credits belong to Malachi Byrd: IG @malbyrd