Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Brianna Rosemarie Aldridge. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Alright, Brianna thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Can you talk to us about a risk you’ve taken – walk us through the story?

There has been many varying considerations that has made pursing my art a risk. A challenging one is the common doubts and disbeliefs that come with careers in art. You always hear the saying “starving artist.” It makes things harder when not as many people believe in you. It is definitely true that selling your art is not the easiest. It does not come with a yearly salary and it could feel similar to walking on a tightrope. There are a lot of obstacles, and the odds are that you are going lose your balance a lot. But losing your balance and falling is part of the learning process, and once you finally start making it across the rope, it truly does feel extraordinary. I’m very grateful for my fiancé and the family and friends that have encouraged and believed in me, even when I fall. The biggest risk of them all for me though, is in my decision to be mother as well. I became pregnant at 19 years old, and now at 24, I have a 4 year and 1 year old daughter. On top of being a mother, there was the challenges of being a young one. I feel a deep purpose in my heart to do the best I possibly can, every day to give my children a life full of love. The risk comes with juggling art with motherhood. I am always in fear that I’m taking away more of the love and time I could be giving to my children, while I’m putting my time into pursuing my art. I know now that this is a very common motherly-guilt. But what I also feel I know now is that the best way to love my children is by loving myself. I cannot give my children empathy, compassion, care, and many other loving characteristics, unless I give those same things to myself first. Pursing a business that gives my life more purpose and connection with others has given me many much-needed doses of self love. In return, has made me love my children and others, more deeply and truly.
Although I am more understanding and compassionate towards these risks then I was when I first started, there are still many days that feels like the guilt is weighing me down. It definitely might have been circumstantially easier to not be self employed. However, every day I try to remind myself that I am doing it to live a life full of love. To love myself and to love others. And that truly is a powerful enough thought to keep me following my dream, despite the risks.

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 fully invested into making oil paintings after graduating from college. This was when I felt like I had gained enough knowledge and skill to brand my art on my own, while also understanding that I should always continue gaining knowledge and skill to grow my craft. From the beginning of my career to currently, I have been working on building my art portfolio, finding my personal style, displaying and selling my oil paintings in art galleries, while also working on custom commissions. I have always been very open with commissions and I have worked on many realistic and fantasy-type of portrait landscape and animal oil paintings.I believe what sets me apart from others is my personal painting style. I believe that is the beautiful thing about art. Artists are like snow, and each snowflake is uniquely different than all the rest. I also continue to put a lot of time, work, and learning into creating my artist style and skill. What I am most proud of within my oil painting career is that I haven’t lost my love for it. Sometimes you don’t make any profit. Sometimes you are told you don’t have the right skill set for certain environments. Sometimes life changes and you lose a loved one, or you have a baby, and pieces of your business need to take step back, while you need to prioritize other aspects of life. When things aren’t always growing business-wise, it could be temping on the heart to forget what gave you joy from it in the first place. I believe that I’ve luckily been able to continue on a path to of bettering myself and finding love for myself, and I think that has kept the flame burning, even when things haven’t gone as I’ve wished. The main thing that I want potential supports of my work to know is that the purpose I find in my oil painting is creating and sharing love, through making something beautiful that resonates and connects with people. Words can’t express how grateful I am for each supporter that I have been able to connect with.

We often hear about learning lessons – but just as important is unlearning lessons. Have you ever had to unlearn a lesson?

The biggest lesson I had to unlearn for my own personal journey was in setting business goals every day. With my field of work, and with my circumstances, things are very unpredictable. I found that I was bringing myself down setting too many goals that I couldn’t meet. I think it took me time to realize I needed to finding a balance between setting not too many or too little of goals.

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

A point in my journey where I felt resilience was when I gave birth to my second child. An equal amount of hardships came with the amount of love that having a second child brought. It did become harder to juggle other parts of my life that weren’t motherhood. It’s been exactly a year since I gave birth, and in this year I has discovered that my heart was capable of an unimaginable amount of love, but I also didn’t know how much more challenging motherhood could be. In trying to discover how to be the best I could be for my children, I discovered how important it was for me to continue pursuing my passion. How pursuing my passion made me a better mom, because loving myself made me a better mom. Vise versa, being a mom and loving myself makes me a better artist. Going through the process of making a very conscious decision to be an artist and a mother, even though its harder than not, was when I felt the most resilient.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: @briannarosemarieart
• Facebook: Brianna Rosemarie Art
• Other: Tiktok: @briannarosemarieart