We were lucky to catch up with Brittanny Bigley recently and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Brittanny thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. What’s been the most meaningful project you’ve worked on?

The most meaningful project of my life is the collection I’m working on right now. The collection is titled “How to Love”. There are so many reasons it will always remain my most meaningful project; it’s my debut project, and it essentially is me displaying my heart and soul to everyone.

An former friend of mine, known as @fnote462 on Instagram, gave me a lot of encouragement and inspiration to convert my art into something meaningful. That being said, I dwelled on this thought and wondered what I could create that would be not only meaningful to others, but to myself.

All I can say is the idea struck me like lightning. During this period in my life, I thought heavily about how I showed love to people. I thought a lot about how I became the person that led me to that point. I think it’s fair to say that in most of cases, we are a product of our environment. Our parents, partners, friends, siblings, and others that have surrounded us throughout the years assist in molding us to the person we become. Those people, those environments teach us so much… but I think most importantly, they teach us how to love. And how we love is a much bigger part of our lives than we really realize.

That was how it hit me… that’s the project. Love is a universal language… it’s something everyone can relate to and understand. As soon as it hit me, I felt assurance in every cell of my body. And as much as I love that I’m fortunate to have started a project that I know everyone can relate to, it’s been extremely therapeutic for me. I’ve gone to therapy for about half of my life (on and off) and I can say that I’ve undoubtedly only scratched the surface of trauma and buried trauma. With my darker pieces that pertain to my attackers, I’m having memories come up and having nightmares. Each of my pieces has resulted in many tears, joyful and sad. This collection is forcing me to face all of my demons, even the forgotten ones, head on. And it’s exactly what I need.

I know that this collection will undoubtedly always be the most meaningful to me, because it is quite literally translating my inner most thoughts and emotions onto canvases. The good, the bad, the beautiful, and the ugly. Which, in a way, is all beautiful.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

I’ve been an artist since I was a child. I’ve drawn ever since I can remember. I come from a family of very talented people in all varieties; musicians, artists, photographers, writers, etc. So I was encouraged to draw, sing, etc. I would alter my clothes all the time too, which wasn’t great since we were really poor, but I was never reprimanded for that. I think it’s because creativity was highly encouraged in my household.

After my dad and grandmother died, I lived with my aunt who was… not quite as keen on taking creativity seriously. For many years I stopped drawing, painting, coloring, etc. After she terminated guardianship and I went into foster care, I started exploring with makeup. Makeup was another thing I loved from a very young age. I’ll never forget the first time I wore eyeliner; it felt transformed. In my teen years, I played with makeup a lot and would frequently practice on others as well as myself. For over a decade, makeup was my creative outlet. I loved it and I still do, just in a different way now.

It wasn’t until a few years ago that I picked up a canvas again. And even then, I initially didn’t take it very seriously. Just a few random pieces here and there, for my own home decor. To be completely honest, I never saw myself as a good enough artist to display my work for others to see. It took a lot of heavy encouragement from my sister and my friends to make me realize that I am actually pretty good at this painting thing.

I think what sets me apart from other artists is that I truly pour my heart and soul into my pieces. Ultimately, that’s my goal as an artist; to invoke thoughts and emotions. To be fair, I know many artists really do put their all into their pieces. I guess what I mean for me is that for my collection pieces, they heavily display the intended emotion. For commission pieces, I take on the emotions of my client(s), if that makes sense. I treat art as true therapy, because for me, it is. I believe that’s why my paintings translate emotion so well. I also really love adding third dimensional elements to my pieces; I feel for that some of them it adds more emphasis to the emotion I’m trying to convey.

I’m really proud to be the place I’m in right now. This is a very transitional period in my life; I’m working through a lot of unresolved emotions and traumas, and my heart and soul is growing much lighter. I’m sharing very personal parts of my life through art, and I’m so fortunate to be able to do that. I truly hope that with this project, I can help others as well. It’s vital to me that people know in spite of whatever they’ve been through, they are fully capable of not only getting through it, but coming out a stronger and wiser person. I hope that I can inspire people to channel their pain and trauma into something beautiful; whatever that creative outlet may be. More importantly, I hope I can remind people that they’re not alone.

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

My life in its entirety is a story of resilience. I have endured physical, mental, emotional, and sexual abuse from the time I was a young child into my adulthood. I have lost loved ones. Other than my sister and my best friend (who I very much consider a sister), I don’t really have contact with my family that is still living. It’s been quite the journey. Honestly though, as cliche as it sounds, I wouldn’t have it any other way. I would not be able to throw myself into my art the way I do if I hadn’t gone through all the things I had. I would not be the person I am today, and that is someone I am growing to truly love. I can’t recall where I heard this from, but I heard someone say, “Only when we suffer can we be great”, and I truly believe there’s so much truth to that. I’m not insinuating that people should suffer to be great, but my favorite artists, musicians, writers, etc., they’ve all had these traumas that built them into the artists that they are. That being said, my whole life and where I am now is the work of art that is my resilience.

Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?

A lesson I still struggle to unlearn at times is one of the most important life lessons for anyone, and that is to stop caring what people think. Seriously, we’ve got to stop worrying about what our family thinks, our former high school friends, our exes… the only person’s opinions who matter are your own. That’s not to say we shouldn’t be open to constructive criticism, but learning to differentiate help and hate is vital. Overall though, I think one of the biggest “why’s” for not chasing our dreams is because we fear what people will think; or more so, that people will reject our contribution. The thing is, if we never get over that fear, we will never make our contribution to this world. I didn’t get to this mindset on my own. It took a lot of advice and encouragement from friends. However, it’s a constant job to remind myself so that I continue to push through and share this project. Ultimately, we are here on this planet for an unknown amount of time. This planet is one rock in one galaxy among thousands. And art, in all forms, is subjective. There will be people who don’t blink twice at your work, but there will also be people who are deeply moved by your work. We cannot control that; all we can truly do is put ourselves out there and hope we reach the right people; and by that I mean the people who will resonate with us and our art. And for anyone who it doesn’t resonate with, we can’t fixate on that; their tastes are elsewhere and that’s okay. We cannot allow peoples’ opinions to stop us from living our truth… in fact, it’s probably the highest disservice we can do to ourselves.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: @itsyourgirlbrittanny
• Other: Email: brittannyleebooking@yahoo.com

Image Credits
All credits are mine