We were lucky to catch up with EC Mazur recently and have shared our conversation below.

EC, appreciate you joining us today. Have you been 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? Was it like that from day one? If not, what were some of the major steps and milestones and do you think you could have sped up the process somehow knowing what you know now?

Deciding to leave my job in the publishing industry and work full-time as an artist was the best decision I ever made. Although I was always a creative child (I was convinced I would be a writer, and I was heavily involved in theatre growing up), I didn’t start making art until after I had graduated university and entered the workforce.

Within months of working in an office environment, I became deeply unhappy. I think something we don’t talk about a lot as we are in school and deciding what we want to do with our lives is what kind of work we can actually bear to do for 8+ hours everyday. For me, managing the creative output of other people was so stifling. I feel so much more fulfilled at the end of the day when I’ve actually made something with my hands- an illustration, a mural, a poem – instead of writing a bunch of emails or calling authors to try and get work out of them. Another thing I quickly discovered about myself is that it also wore down on my soul to work for a larger company that made decisions I didn’t agree with ethically – decisions that affected both my morale and the morale of my colleagues. It’s hard to feel good in that kind of environment.

I turned to drawing as a means of escapism – and after a few unhappy years, I knew I needed to change something, but I didn’t know how. I didn’t go to art school, I didn’t know anything about the art world, and I didn’t know how to run a business. I was also in a new city and didn’t have a community, or even family, that I could use as a jumping off point to try and network. And most of the conversation about working as an artist is so discouraging – it’s made to seem like an impossible dream. We are definitely fed one story of how your life should look like from a young age: get good grades, go to a good university, get a degree, find a job, work your way up the ladder, retire. Working freelance and entrepreneurship are hardly talked about, and when they are, we hear about how hard it is, how precarious it is, and that most people don’t make it.

Thank goodness this isn’t true! Not only is it possible to work full-time as an artist, there are so many opportunities for artists to build a career outside of the gallery-track that many people think is the only way to succeed. I started sharing my artwork about two years after I started drawing. I had no money to invest in my art career, and I’m pretty risk-averse anyway, so I sought out ways to market and sell my work that were free. At the time, that meant joining Instagram and print-on-demand sites, and this was my way in. It can be hard to start from nothing and feel like what you are doing isn’t reaching anyone, but I was relentless. I worked on my drawings and on marketing every day, on all of my lunch breaks, on my commute to and from work, any spare moment I had.

And the results were slow – I can see where a lot of people get discouraged. I’m sure desperation and wanting to get out of my job helped me push through the doubt and keep going, and it was actually something pretty simple that started a big difference for me. Anytime I had an opportunity to introduce myself to someone, I called myself an artist. A lot of artists feel afraid to call themselves that until they’ve established themselves in some way, but I’m a big believer that if you make art, you are an artist. You don’t have to be selling your work, or be known to qualify. And when I started believing that I was an artist, other people did too. People I worked with, people I met at random trade shows, people on local facebook groups started reaching out with art projects they had, or bought my work from the print-on-demand sites I used, and things built up from there. It always surprised me that people I thought didn’t even know my name, much less remember me, would think of me as an artist and support my work. And the more people I worked with, the more people I met, the more I learned about other opportunities for artists, from free programs to learn about running a business as a creative to grants and organizations for artists. There is so much out there once you start looking.

I had already started building up passive income when I decided to try working full-time as an artist. It’s not for everyone, but my personality is so well-suited to running my own business. I don’t mind not knowing exactly how much I’m going to make every month – in fact, I find it liberating, because there is also no limit to how much I can make. I’m way less stressed, and my mental health has improved (this is probably the most important transformation for me). Instead of working for a large corporation, I’m working with other passionate people and small businesses, creating posters for theatre groups or musicians, illustrating indie tarot decks, painting murals for local restaurants and salons. Instead of longing for the weekend, I wake up on Mondays so excited to start creating.

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

I’m a multidisciplinary artist working in Toronto, Canada. Most of the work I do is visual art, but I also write and perform poetry and I’m involved in theatre as well. These parts of my art practice are growing, and tend to overlap with the visual art. I started drawing about 10 years ago, and I’ve worked full-time as an artist for the past 5 years.

I work mostly with pen and ink, and I will often scan in my drawings and then colour them digitally. I create whimsical dreamscapes, exploring the beauty of nature and the power of the human imagination. The endless depths of the ocean waves, the enchantment of the forests, and the mysteries of the stars in the sky all inspire my intricate drawings. I’m also fascinated by the ability as humans to create – to take a simple sheet of paper and a pen, and make something new, especially things that don’t exist in our day-to-day reality. I hope my work will awaken the imagination of the viewer and remind them to look around and marvel at the infinite magic of our existence.

Outside of personal work, which I sell the originals and prints of on my online store and at local arts markets, I also take on illustration work for projects I’m passionate about. For me, this means I’m usually working with other artists – theatre makes, musicians, tarot deck creators, and filmmakers. I really like to collaborate and give my clients lots of room to be involved in the creation process – so the result is something special that reflects both of us. Again, it’s that fascination with what the human imagination can create.

I also paint murals – something I sort of fell into. Other artists I was meeting made murals, and one day I took a Posca marker to my bedroom wall. I loved it – I loved the way it could transform a room, I loved working on a larger scale, and I loved that murals, especially outdoor murals, let me contribute to the landscape of the city. There are thousands of people that pass by these murals, and I still think it’s one of the coolest things I get to do.

In the past two years, I returned to my writing roots, and I began to write poetry. I’ve since released my first book of poetry and started performing it wherever I can. I find the drawings I make often inform the poems I write, or vice versa, and it’s been exciting to see how different mediums of art can overlap. The poetry has also really helped me with understanding my drawings and what’s coming out of my soul. People respond to different things, so it’s nice to bring in elements of writing, visual art, and auditory art together. I feel like I can reach more people that way. The last few murals I’ve done have also included lines of poetry, and my latest art exhibit includes a soundscape that’s been layered into recitations of the poems that inspired the pieces in the show. We are often told to focus on one aspect of our art practice and really build a niche, but I’m much more excited by exploring whatever my heart is pulled towards. We have so many forms of expression open to us, so why stick to just one? I’ve found it’s opened up more opportunities for creating income and it’s made me more unique as an artist.

What can society do to ensure an environment that’s helpful to artists and creatives?

We need to talk more about how vital a role art plays in our lives. Most of go through our day and don’t even realize how much art we are encountering – the dozens of ads we see on our commute, the music that is playing at the grocery store, the pattern on the fabric that our shirt is made out, the layout of our homes, the design of the furniture we sit on – and these are just some forms of art we aren’t necessarily making choices to consume. So then you also have the music you put on while you’re working, or the art you hang up in your home, or the notebook with the pretty cover that you picked out at the store, or the tv shows and films you decide to watch, or the performances you choose to attend. Imagine if all of that was gone? No design, no song, no fashion, no architecture, no dancing, just blank walls and and empty evenings. Art is essential to our human experience. It has a huge impact on our lives.

And yet, the way we talk about art often devalues it. I can’t tell you how often I hear that it’s impossible to make a living as an artist and that most artists are starving, or hear a parent worrying about what they will do if their child, heaven forbid, wants to be a musician, or that you’re only a real artist if you are in a gallery. And when we talk about art this way, it does make it harder for creatives to ask for fair compensation for their work. We need to have a better understanding of how we consume art, and that there is a hard-working, passionate creative behind almost everything we interact with, and hopefully this will build an understanding of what goes into the art we consume, and how we can make a fair exchange with artists for that value.

What do you find most rewarding about being a creative?

There are so many rewarding aspects to being an artist. I feel so lucky that this is what I wake up and do every day. It fulfills me like nothing else, gives me such purpose and joy. I’ve gotten to meet so many wonderful people, attend cool events, paint on the streets, build a community, collaborate with other artists, and make work that I’m proud of.

But there is one thing that stands out as one of the most rewarding aspects, and it’s something that I wasn’t expecting when I started sharing my art. I struggled with depression from a young age, and I often felt isolated and lonely. I also moved around a lot and I found it hard to make friends and have a sense of community. And in a sense, the world around us is created by how our brain reads the signals around us. We can never really know that we are seeing the same thing as the person standing next to us. We can never really know that we are hearing and feeling the same things, that we experience colour the same way. Our experiences are so internal, but I think art allows us to transcend this isolation. I remember when I first started selling my work, I was delivering my artwork to someone who had bought two pieces. They were a complete stranger, we had never met, and as soon as we both saw each other, we both just got teary-eyed – simply from the connection of a picture I had drawn. And this happens often now – people have been kind enough to share the impact my art has had on them, how it captures a memory, or a person, or a feeling for them. Suddenly, we are sharing some experience of being human together, and it makes me feel more connected to the world around me. It is the most special thing!

Contact Info:

• Website: www.ecmazur.com
• Instagram: www.instagram.com/ecmazurart
• Facebook: www.facebook.com/ecmazurart

Image Credits
Andrew Garcia (photosbydrew)