We were lucky to catch up with Dana Woulfe recently and have shared our conversation below.

Dana, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Are you able to earn a full-time living from your creative work? If so, can you walk us through your journey and how you made it happen?

I am proud to say I am able to earn a full time living from my creative work.

It wasn’t an easy or obvious path, but I have now been running a business creating murals and graphics for over a decade now. After college, where I majored in Illustration, I took a web design job in the dot com world. After just a few months in my new “career”,  Sept 11th happened, the industry collapsed, and I was laid off. I began piecing together freelance gigs and pushing my own creative work harder, creating t-shirt, snowboard, and sneaker graphics. With this portfolio of work I got a job at Converse as a sneaker designer where I spent 7 years in the industry, before once again changing careers. This time it was the birth of my daughter that changed things for me. With the blessing of my wife, I left the corporate world to be a full time dad and part time artist, but pretty quickly my part time art business became a full time career, as I founded Studio Fresh and have been running it ever since.

I don’t know if there was anything specific I could have done to speed my process up, as I believe each part of my journey taught me something important that I use now. But if anything….don’t wait. Take the chance, Chase your dream. It won’t get any easier later…you just have to make the choice to start.

Dana, 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 visual artist (painter) and small business owner.
I specialize in large scale murals, which is what my business (Studio Fresh) does commercially. I got into mural painting via graffiti, which I “specialized” in while attending college in Boston. I’ve maintained my own artistic practice/identity over the years but my day to day focus is on my business now. Our first gigs were CrossFit gyms and warehouse parties, but we now do large scale commercial jobs in multi-million dollar developments.

Studio Fresh fits a niche that not many businesses do in that we can be both creative and commercial We have the creative flexibility of working in many different artistic styles/colors/treatments and the commercial knowledge/expertise to “do it right” and scale things to larger than life dimensions.

We have now compiled a pretty impressive portfolio of work, including the largest hand painted, rotating globe in the world at Babson College, a large scale rendition of Winslow Homers “Breezing Up” in Gloucester, MA, the graphics in half the parking garages in Bostons Seaport District…and much more.

Im really proud of the work we do and the name we have built in the area. Its not easy to make a living on your own terms as a creative but I’m happy to say its working for me so far.

What do you find most rewarding about being a creative?

The ability to create something that has value to someone. Nothing is as rewarding as the pride you feel when you are able to create something for someone that they truly appreciate. Secondarily, I really love the ability to earn a living on my own terms…not needing to work for someone else, control of my schedule and the ability to say yes or no to jobs.

How about pivoting – can you share the story of a time you’ve had to pivot?

When i graduated from college and got a job in the web design world I thought i had it all figured out. The industry was thriving, I had learned all the latest programs and was ready to settle in…

And then Sept 11th happened.

The job I had disappeared, as did most of the “dot com” industry and I had to figure out a new game plan.

I scanned job boards regularly, taking whatever freelance gigs I could and eventually cobbled together a few different part time jobs to move forward.

It seemed like a huge setback in my career at the time, but that time built the foundation for the rest of my career. It helped me build the creative portfolio to get me the next big job of my career, and set the path for me eventually starting out on my own.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://studiofreshboston.com
• Instagram:@studiofreshboston, @danawoulfe