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

Hi Carolina, thanks for joining us today. The first dollar you earn is always exciting – it’s like the start of a new chapter and so we’d love to hear about the first time you sold or generated revenue from your creative work?

When I was about 9 years old, my dad taught me how to make bracelets and rings with this colorful electrical wire scraps he had. I started taking my creations to school and my classmates would buy them. I had other creative entrepreneurial experiences like that, at around the same age. I made these little things to hang on the wall with cute pictures in them and motivational phrases, like the ones I’d seen at a local stationery shop. I sold these in my neighborhood, I set up some sort of improvised booth in our garage and all the kids started buying them. I don’t recall them being all that pretty or me being such a great sales “woman”, but somehow I was selling them. It was not until recently that I realized that it was so early in my childhood that the path to what I was going to become was already being forged. Or simply that creative entrepreneurship was naturally in me, from the beginning. From my beginning. The feeling I can recall from these experiences is the excitement of making money for whatever I was saving for at that moment. We were a middle class family in Costa Rica, which is a lot less affluent than the equivalent here in the U.S, and I was used to not asking for much, knowing that everything we had, aside from the basics, had required saving and sacrifice. Money was always spent (it had to be) thoughtfully, so in those early years, creativity was a means to an end. I didn’t want much, but it was great to have my “own money”. As I got older, art and creativity became what I needed to live, like breathing. Making money from it wasn’t important. I just wanted to make art. That would evolve once again, into a balance between the two – the need and want to make money from art and the need and want to make art for self fulfillment-, once I became a full time artist.

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?

I’m Carolina Coto, the owner of Carolina Coto Art, a small “one woman” creative art business on the Outer Banks of North Carolina. I was born and raised in Costa Rica. My dad loved art and painted as a hobby, seeing him painting made me decide at around age 9 that I wanted to be a painter too. That idea never left me and I remember arguing with him in the car when I was 15, about not wanting to go college. He very frustratedly asked why, I said it was because all I wanted to do was to be an artist (as a teenager I had assumed art couldn’t be studied in university, for some reason). He said I could study art in college and that was that, my path was decided then, to his delight. He was always my biggest supporter and the reason why I decided to pursue this life. I graduated with a Bachelors degree in Fine Art with emphasis in painting from University of Costa Rica in 2007.

It actually took me 10 years to graduate, I have the “travel bug” and at some point started going on backpacking trips overseas, missing a semester here, a year there. I was also simultaneously studying classical guitar in the same university, for 4 years out of those 10, studying an instrument is demanding so I was practicing 5-6 hours a day, 7 days a week. I couldn’t manage to take the full art program every semester, but I loved my time in university and all of those years of art, music and travel, so no regrets!

There was a good chunk of time in between graduating from university and starting my life as a full time artist, here in the U.S. I was always making art, but while I lived in Costa Rica, art was not my main source of income, far from it. I had a stint as an art gallery administrator in 2007 and 2008, and that kind of started pushing me into a more clear artistic direction in my life. Then that push became a full on shove when in 2010 I met an Outer Banks’ surfer online, that cyber encounter turned into a whirlwind romance and later into a wedding and migration to the U.S in August of 2011. I was in a new country and in a touristic town with all kinds of opportunities for artists to sell their art, so I jumped right into my new life as a full time artist. I initially supplemented art making, exhibiting and selling with cleaning rental beach cottages on the weekends, but pretty quickly there was not enough time for both; there was definitely enough to keep me busy with art alone.

I started selling only my originals and prints, but I eventually expanded into jewelry, made with tiny reproductions of my paintings, and those have become my best selling items during tourist season here on the Outer Banks and one of my signature products.

I’m known for my bright “happy” colors, as many call them, and for my playful painting style. I don’t seem to be able to paint anything using “real life” colors, so most of my work is a rainbow version of the real life thing, I guess you could say.

I’m always playing with new ideas and I love putting my art on things, so every so often I come up with some new products which may come and go, but originals, prints and jewelry are always in the lineup. As of now I sell my art from Spring to late Summer and the Holidays at local art shows and year round in local galleries, my website, Etsy, Society6 and Spoonflower. I sell wholesale as well and I’m hoping to expand my portfolio of retailers this year and going forward.

I’m proud of how I’ve evolved as an artist during this over a decade time as a full time artist. There’s been many times of doubt and actual tears. Many times when I’ve questioned the value of my work and my abilities as an artist. But in the end I have pushed through, and most importantly, have managed to keep the joy of making art as an intrinsic part of my business. I love that I can make a living with art, but in the end I’m still that 18 year old who would answer “I don’t care, I just want to make art” to the constant question: “but what are you going to do for work”? that people would ask after I’d reveal that I was studying fine art. Don’t get me wrong, I have always been very hard working, and I always knew I would manage financially, but art was sacred and an existential need for me, so work and finances had nothing to do with art, in my mind. Now I am working as an artist, and making a living with it, but art is still my love, my passion, my joy, even when there’s moments of exhaustion and burn out, in this busy tourist town of ours, I can always get back to it and be in my happy place.

My business tagline is: “Carolina Coto Art, Made With Joy On The Outer Banks”, and people can know that this is the truth. I’m proud of that.

What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?

I’m not sure if it was necessarily a lesson, but more of a belief I had to let go of. For more than half the time I’ve been a full time artist, I believed that I needed to do certain things in my business the way “experts” said I had to do them, and I believed (or didn’t have the confidence!) that I could figure these things out on my own.

For example, a few years after starting my business I became too preoccupied about what it meant to be successful as an artist, and sometimes I would feel like I needed to do all these things to get to where I was supposed to be. And I think it was actually during Covid that I realized how much people liked my work, and that I was already where I needed to be: I was happy making my art, and people were buying it. After coming to this realization I started trusting my instincts and my process, instead of forcing myself to follow x,y and z proven steps to achieve “success”, or followers, or whatever the golden unicorn the person teaching the online class was guaranteeing you would capture.

The same thing happened at around the same time with social media. I can’t say I have a great following or anything like that, but I feel that the people that follow me are pretty engaged and I realized that the minute I stopped worrying about doing things the way “the gurus” said I had to do them, things started flowing better for me, and I got better results. My audience started growing and my sales started increasing once I started following my gut and just having fun with it, and most importantly, when I stoped listening to all the “noise”.

What’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative in your experience?

In an introspective way: It fulfills me to the max, it makes me happy, it relaxes me, it gives me energy, it lets me express myself, it helps me understand things and it comforts me. It makes me feel accomplished.

In an outward way: Customers tell me my art makes them happy.

Being an artist makes me happy and makes others happy, so they tell me. I couldn’t ask for a more rewarding profession.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.carolinacotoart.com
• Instagram: @carolinacotoart
• Facebook: Carolina Coto Art
• Youtube: @carolinacotoart

Image Credits
Brian Zongolowicz Carolina Coto