We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Brian Holt. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Brian below.
Hi Brian, thanks for joining us today. Are you able to earn a full-time living from your creative work? If so, can you walk us through your journey and how you made it happen?
I have been fortunate enough to be able to work full-time as an artist since I started my business in 1998. I always knew that I wanted to be an artist and spent a large chunk of my childhood practicing. Talking with adults as a kid it sounded like making a living as an artist was a pipe dream. I definitely didn’t want to be a starving artists so I made a list of different ways to make money as an artist. After college I decided that my best choice of action was to reach out to local designers and ask them to recommend me to their clients. I offered them a 10% commission for every job they referred. There are pros and cons to everything and this is no different. Pros would be that I can work as an artist and make a great living doing it. I am self employed so I got to make my own hours and set my own prices. Instead of me creating a piece of art and hoping it would speak to just the right person and make money, I had people coming to me and paying a little more because they got to dictate what they wanted. And that leads me to the largest Con; you have to paint what they want you to paint and the style and colors they want you to paint. Obviously most people will look to you to help come up with the design but you aren’t just painting everything you want to paint everyday. There are times when people have asked me to paint stuff that I knew would not look good, I would warn them of my concerns and give them other options but they were firm with their ideas and after I painted it they were thrilled while I was like (don’t tell anyone I painted that). So you lose some of your creative control when it’s commissioned work but it allows you to paint the stuff you want in your own time.
It wasn’t long into my journey with the interior designers that I was asked to do faux finishes. I taught myself how to do all the different finishes (this was before the Internet and YouTube) and I was able to expand my offerings. This turned out to be a great move for my business as the years passed by I found my business was pretty much split with half of my work being murals and the other half being faux finishes. When other artist were slow I was staying busy. I don’t use designers as much as I used to, like most everything else the Internet changed my business model. I spend a fraction of what I used to spend on commissions to designers compared to online advertisements.
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 started drawing at an early age. My mother is an artist as well, but I am the youngest of four siblings so by the time I was born she had stopped painting and had become a full-time mom. She encouraged me to draw and gave me tips when she could, but I think she would agree that I was pretty much self-taught. As I started college, she encouraged me to get a business degree instead of the art degree I wanted. I listened to her advice and it definitely helped me run a successful business for the past 21 years. One Christmas during my Sophomore year in college my mother sent me a canvas and paints with a note saying “just try it”. Up until that moment, I had been a pencil/ charcoal kind of guy. I had never really tried painting but I went about turning that blank canvas into a work of art. To my surprise, it actually turned out better than I thought it would. My friends didn’t believe I painted it. It was from that moment that I knew I had to come up with a way to do this every day and make a living from painting. I didn’t want to be a “starving artist” so I brainstormed and thought how can I get people to commission my work. That is when I reached out to designers and started painting murals for residential and commercial clients. I feel really blessed to be able to visually see the layers of colors and textures of different finishes.
It’s almost like my brain separates the layers and it sees the colors underneath several layers of glazes. This is so helpful in helping my clients achieve the look they want or to repair finishes that were done before I was called to help. Figuring out the finishes is like a puzzle and I find it so much fun to figure it out.
There are a lot of artist out there with all different styles and techniques. I think one of the major things that separates me from a lot of them is that this is a business and a passion of mine. I show up when I say I’m going to show up and I do what I say I’m going to do. I can’t tell you how many clients have commented on the fact that I’m usually 5 min early for every appointment.
What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?
I’m originally from the south and we are taught to be non confrontational when it comes to money. We were taught that it was not polite to talk about money. How crazy is that! This lesson is two fold. One is make sure you get some of your money upfront to pay for supplies so that you don’t have your money in the project. I make sure upfront that the client knows what is expected of them. I require 50% upfront and 50% upon completion. If they don’t want to give me the 50% upfront I tell them once I get it I will put them on my schedule. It’s nothing personal, they are commissioning me to work for them and I shouldn’t have to chase them down to pay me. The second thing is when someone approaches you about doing work for free and you will get publicity from the job. Run! Run! and Run! They wouldn’t work for free so why would you!
Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?
I’ve recently made a live changing move in my life and my business. I decided to move across country and basically start my business over completely. I made the move from Atlanta GA to Portland OR at the beginning of 2020. I moved into my new house the same week the pandemic lock down started. While I still obviously had my portfolio and the skills I had developed over the 25 years in Atlanta, now I was on pause as we all held our breath as the pandemic crippled the world. It has been over 2 years now since I’ve moved to Portland and I have my new website up www.PortlandMurals.com and I am getting leads every week. As things are opening back up I’m enjoying my new city and I look forward to meeting new clients.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.PortlandMurals.com
- Instagram: muralspdx