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

Cora, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Did you always know you wanted to pursue a creative or artistic career? When did you first know?

This is a bit of a long story, but it’s one I like to share! Realizing that I could pursue art professionally was a year-long journey for me back in high school, around when I was 16. My twin sister and I decided to start an Instagram art account together to share some of our old art that we made for fun. Growing up, my sister and I were above average with art but never took it too seriously, especially since our mom had gone to school for art and was a full time teacher in music, we didn’t think that you could do anything with art more than as a hobby. Well, after only 3 days of sharing our work, we already hit 100 followers and ran out of old art to share! So we decided we needed to make some art to post. Fast forward, we kept making art and sharing it and gained over 1k followers in a month! We were surprised by how well our art was being received, but still didn’t think we could do anything with it professionally. Going into our final year of high school, we had gained over 40k followers on our Instagram account. After a year of me really focusing on math and science, I knew that I wanted to do something as a career that I enjoyed, and art had become that thing. I had grown in confidence and felt like this was something I would love to do for a living. This led to my sister and I going to Sheridan College for their Art Fundamentals program. We both wanted to do animation but quickly realized our skills weren’t there yet! After a year, we got to apply to animation and my sister got in, but I unfortunately did not, so I had to wait another year to apply. I ended up getting in the next year and started working professionally as a background painter in the animation industry during the summer of my second year in college! It was such a surreal experience to go from just drawing for fun to being paid to make art for a children’s show I grew up watching.

Cora, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

I am a digital and traditional artist who graduated from Sheridan College’s Bachelor of Animation program in 2023 and have worked in the animation industry as a background painter for 3 years. After getting married in 2023 and immigrating to the United States, I have been focusing on being a stay-at-home mom to my daughter, who was born in 2024. I am still making art but have been focusing more on children’s book illustration, art commissions for a variety of clients, and other personal projects. I try to bring my Catholic faith into the work that I put out and am most proud of my ability to use moments of failure as motivation to get back up and keep going. I also have a twin sister who is a professional artist, so going through my artistic journey with her from high school to college, and then getting the opportunity to work at the same animation studio has been such a blessing!

We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.

For me, one of the biggest moments of resilience was applying to Sheridan’s animation program along with my twin sister and hearing the bittersweet news that she had gotten in and I hadn’t. It was such a hard moment to be happy for her, but also know that I wasn’t good enough yet. It was also hard to realize that our art journey together was changing. I needed to decide if I wanted to continue or not. On the application, one of my lowest scores was life drawing: I had only scored a 4 out of 10, which was devastating to me because I tried going to extra sessions and had a tutor to help me improve. My sister had excelled and I felt like, clearly, I had not. Instead of getting super discouraged, I took that failure and I pushed myself even harder to improve my drawing skills in all areas, but in particular, I went 4-5 times a week to attend extra life drawing sessions. The next year, I not only got accepted into Sheridan’s animation program, but I also got a perfect score in the life drawing section! Looking back, that extra year I had waiting to get into animation turned into one of my biggest years of growth artistically and personally, and l I wouldn’t have changed anything. That moment of failure has truly shaped me into the artist I am today.

Have you ever had to pivot?

I feel like my life and career have both been a huge pivot over the past couple of years. Getting married to an American and moving from Canada to the United States really changed what I was able to do artistically over the last year and a half. I went from being able to work in the Canadian animation industry to having to wait over a year for my American work visa to be approved. During that time, I also became a mother and now I’m confident that while I love creating and making art, my career will be secondary to raising my daughter and any future children! I’m still making art and will be working on illustrating children’s books, but I have had to pivot my art career to more part-time work while balancing being a new mom and living in a new country away from most of my family!

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.littleflowercreative.co/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/corapotvin/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/corapotvin/