We were lucky to catch up with Annie Brooks recently and have shared our conversation below.
Alright, Annie thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Let’s jump back to the first dollar you earned as a creative? What can you share with us about how it happened?
It was the summer that my mom and I were moving around, living at friends’ houses, with all of our belongings in the back of an ’87 Jeep Cherokee. I was nine years old. I spent a lot of time writing and drawing that summer, creating a vibrant imaginary world for myself. We had made it to California and were staying with a family in a really nice neighborhood. The first dollar I made as an artist was outside of that house, at a roadside stand I set up with my friend. Instead of lemonade, we were selling my drawings of frogs dressed up in different costumes. I had stacks and stack of them.
Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.
I am heavily inspired by my travels in India and the Middle East, by my childhood, and by a desire to encourage people to play and to pursue their own wild ideas.
I was born into a family of working musicians and artists. I grew up surrounded by people who believed that a creative whim should be pursued, honed and brought to existence. By the time I was 18, I was recording music, traveling with my guitar, and married to my husband, Jake, who is also an artist. My journey to watercolor and design is a wild and winding one, weaving through 50 countries, through pulling teeth in remote villages, through recording albums and touring, and through a career as a teacher and in wedding photography. I haven’t found an elegant way to summarize that odyssey.
The biggest boons on that journey were people. Bloggers who wanted to publish me, photographers (especially Jake, my biggest supporter) who wanted to present my work beautifully, friends who wanted sit and work with me, and stylists who wanted to include me in editorial shoots. The most important thing in a creative journey is to surround yourself with people who are excited about what you’re chasing.
I was completely obsessed with my new creative outlet. It was 2014 and Jake and my 10th anniversary was coming up. I painted for over 12 hours a day for 3 weeks, to make him an illustrated book of our adventures. That was my crash course in watercolor, and my first portfolio.
Back in those days it was really, really easy to be seen on Instagram, and I built a solid foundation of clients really quickly.
By 2015, I had too much work, and I was able to hire my friend Whitney Watts to be another artist The Wells Makery. Whitney and I have been making things together since a tie-dyed scruchie making party when I was 10 years old, so getting to work with her “for real” is a dream come true.
Since then, we’ve worked with almost 1000 clients. We make logos, stationery, packaging design, prints, book illustrations, portraits, birth charts, family trees, maps, and prints. Recently, I wrote an illustrated my first children’s book, and Whitney has been creating absolutely mind blowing topographical maps for wineries. Whitney is building her own adobe house, and I’m writing, singing and playing guitar in a really heavy psych-rock band, so our creative paths are not a monoculture. It feels really good to have multiple outlets and to be a little less intense, though I do miss the obsession I felt when I started the business. That feeling comes and goes, and I trust that it will be back in one form or another again and again and again.
Our aim is to make art that is stylish but full of life, playful but elegant, fun but profound. Heck…hopefully I can embody those things someday, too.
How can we best help foster a strong, supportive environment for artists and creatives?
I think that the best thing society can do to support artists is to collaborate with them. We live in an age where it’s easy to get an app, a filter or AI to create something for you, but one of Earth’s finest treasures is the human imagination. Imagination is a muscle we have to exercise both personally AND collectively. Nothing can replace the magic of a thing that was created from a human’s imagination.
It’s also important for us, as artists, to not undersell ourselves. We crave exposure and will trade our work for exposure, rather than charging for what it’s worth. When we undersell our art, it not only devalues our own work, but the work of other artists in your industry, and it teaches the world that an artists work isn’t something to pay for. As artists, we have the responsibility to teach the world that art, human imagination, and the work of hands has value. This doesn’t mean we can’t be outrageously generous, but it does mean that we have to value our own work!
What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?
I had to unlearn that my art is valuable only when people purchase it. It’s important to value your work and to charge appropriately for it, but it’s equally as important to remember that your art isn’t invalid or valuable if it doesn’t sell.
The pandemic took a giant swing-and-a-hit at The Wells Makery, and things are still not back to 100%. Work is slow, and I’ve learned that I have to find motivation to make art from a completely different place. I used to be motivated because I knew that my work would result directly with attention, collaborative opportunities, social validation, and sales. Now, I am learning to create because I simply enjoy creating, like I did as a kiddo. I have always believed that the process is far more important than the product, and now I’m learning to live that belief. It’s a wildly uncomfortable and important lesson that I will probably have to keep learning in new ways for my whole life.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.thewellsmakery.com
- Instagram: @thewellsmakery
Image Credits
Brumley & Wells Kim Branagan