We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Courtney Agee a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Courtney, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Earning a full time living from one’s creative career can be incredibly difficult. Have you been able to do so and if so, can you share some of the key parts of your journey and any important advice or lessons that might help creatives who haven’t been able to yet?

Hi!

My name is Courtney Agee and I am a full-time artist and creative – it has been a wild ride and I still can’t believe that this is my life.

It certainly did not start out this successful from Day 1. While I have been an artist since I could pick-up a crayon, I did not pursue a creative career as an artist initially. I had those dreams in the back of my head, and actually was a Fine Arts major for my first year in college.

Long story short, I hated art school.

At the time, I was still figuring out who I was and healing from a tumultuous childhood. Art school felt creatively stifling to me. It took the one thing that I loved above all else, a thing that had given me refuge from my childhood trauma and made it something that I was graded and critiqued on.

There were too many rules when I needed something more freeform. I felt burnt out and a bit hopeless at the time. I ended up switching my major after one year to something more practical – Communications and Marketing. I want to make it clear that this is not shade against art school – merely that technical art education wasn’t the right fit for me.

My goal at the time was just to get a good job to pay off my student debt I was accumulating. And so I graduated college with a ton of debt and a degree in Marketing. I ended up meandering through a career that paid the bills for almost a decade. I took a break from making any art at all for years.

During the 2020 Covid-19 pandemic, when we were all stuck inside, I started to practice making art regularly again. I did it for FUN for the first time in a long time. I experimented with new techniques and new mediums I had never tried before because why not?

It became a refuge for me again – something that helped me quiet my mind when the world felt like it was falling apart.

One day I decided to start posting my work on Instagram. Then another day I decided to open an Etsy shop and start selling prints. For years I posted and sold a print here and there online. I started to do commissions. I kept making content online to share my art with the world.

After several years, it kept building and I kept getting more engagement online. I did all of this while working a full-time 9-5. Then, in 2024 – I had two videos go viral on TikTok. Since then, I have seen an exponential jump in growth. I started doing in-person events here in the St. Louis area in late 2024 and have seen amazing success. The St. Louis small business and arts community is incredible and the support has been overwhelming.

In early 2025, I started to think about going down to part-time work to pursue my budding art career more seriously.

In July of 2025, I was laid off from my 9-5 – forcing me to jump in two feet first. My husband encouraged me to pursue my art full-time with his support and so I did.

Since then, I have continued to see growth, month-by-month. While sometimes it can be tough – monthly income is now inconsistent and it took a while to wrap my head around, it is SO worth it.

I now am 11 months into being a full-time artist and there is no end in sight. I am so very lucky.

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

My name is Courtney Agee and I am a painter, illustrator, and multimedia artist based out of St. Louis, MO. I have been an artist for as long as I remember but started pursuing a professional career in the arts in the past 6 years.

My work is defined by its color – I am captivated by the way that light and color interact with one another and am drawn to bold contrast. I typically layer acrylic paint and ink illustration again and again and again, combining painting and drawing to create my work.

Most of my art is inspired by wildlife, human nature and fantasy and the intersection between the three. I like to tell stories with my work – often using symbols and motifs to paint the bigger picture. I also am an avid lover of nature and love to study the world around me in my own way.

However, I don’t restrict myself to one single topic or theme – if you look at my work, you can see that sometimes I bounce around. At the core of my practice is the belief that being an artist means that you should follow your heart on whatever creative calling is resonating with you at any single time. Don’t put yourself in a box, never stop experimenting, make mistakes, and be open to creating art just for the fun of it.

I currently sell my original paintings to collectors around the St. Louis area and beyond, along with giclee prints (both limited and open editions) and other merch such as stickers, bookmarks, and playmats. I sell both online and in-person around the St. Louis area, occasionally travelling for events in other cities. I also regularly do commissions, including mural work, and regularly volunteer for early childhood arts education opportunities.

I am most proud of how far my mindset has come since I attempted to go to art school in 2013 (eventually dropping out and switching my major after only 1 year). At that time, I was burnt out, frustrated, and hopeless about the prospect of pursuing art to make a living. I even stopped creating art for years. But when I came back to it, I did it for me. I did it because I loved it and not because I was expected to or needed a good grade.

My mindset has taken me far – and I am really proud of that.

How can we best help foster a strong, supportive environment for artists and creatives?

If you like music, movies, books, TV shows, pretty murals around your local neighborhood, aesthetic bars and restaurants, poetry, fine art, anime, dance performances or theatre….you are a fan of the arts.

And if you are a fan of the arts, you should support living artists in any way you can – following them on social media, boosting their posts, purchasing a sticker from them, a print, an original. Talk about them to your friends, family and coworkers.

Art inspires art. A print you hang up in your home could influence an aspiring writer to write their next novel. That novel may inspire a TV show. A piece of music that was written and shared with your community could inspire a sculptor to pick up their tools, which in turn inspires a new mural around the corner. It is all connected.

How did you build your audience on social media?

My presence on social media was built brick by brick. It took years to come to fruition – posting consistently, researching the best way to use social media as a tool, and getting guidance from other creators.

After years of posting consistently, I had a few posts go viral, and it’s been exponential growth from there.

The biggest piece of advice I can give you is work smarter, not harder.

The algorithms just want you to post consistently – but that frequency is up to you. Build up to it – the same way that you would to practice for a 5k. Start with running a half a mile, and build your way up to running a 5k. Post at least once a week and overtime increase your frequency. This just helps you build a sustainable habit.

Also use the scheduling tools! Work on 3 posts at once and schedule them out for the week. It makes it much more attainable.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.moralmutinystudio.com
• Instagram: @moral.mutiny
• Other: TikTok: @moral.mutiny

Image Credits

Image 1 (Primary Image) and Image 2 were taken by Lumosco Photo