We recently connected with Emily Valentine and have shared our conversation below.

Emily, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Did you always know you wanted to pursue a creative or artistic career? When did you first know?

I have always been creative and I’ve had a passion for drawing and painting from a very early age. However, as a teenager and young adult, I didn’t think that being an artist was a viable career option, so I decided to take a “safer” path. I went to university to study animal biology, but after three years of undergrad, I decided that route wasn’t for me. Uncertain about my career, I stumbled upon a conversation between professional artists Tim Packer and Brooke Cormier. They discussed how it’s not only possible to make a living as artist, but guaranteed, if you have the passion and dedication it takes to succeed. This finally connected the dots in my mind, and I knew that I wanted to become a professional artist. I spent the next year improving my technical ability and compositional knowledge, to the point where I had strangers asking to buy my art or commission a painting. Since then, I have been selling original paintings and prints of my work to collectors across North America!

Emily, 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?

My name is Emily Valentine, I am 23 years old, and I’m an artist from Toronto, Canada. After deciding to drop out of university in 2021 to pursue my dream of becoming a professional artist, I experimented with painting a variety of subject matter, but noticed I had a unique passion for still life. I loved the bright colours of fruit and fabric and enjoyed capturing reflections. The public also seemed to appreciate my work, and I started selling my still life paintings to collectors via social media.

In spring 2022, I was juried into The Artist Project, one of the most prestigious art shows in North America. I was ecstatic. I prepared over a dozen paintings for the exhibition, and to my amazement, sold all of them at the show. Since then, I have won seven national and international awards, gained an audience of over 100,000 on social media, and exhibited my work in respected galleries across Canada.

I feel very fortunate to be able to paint what I love for a living. This year my goal is to experiment within the still life genre, such as attempting to paint with palette knifes, using unusual objects as props, and trying out new colour schemes. I am still at the start of my career and have a lot of learning to do!

Any resources you can share with us that might be helpful to other creatives?

I think that learning and mastering composition is the most valuable skill for a visual artist and yet is the most overlooked subject in art school. During the pandemic, I took a few university-level art courses and found that most of my professors were more interested in discussing the politics behind the art than any kind of technical skills, least of all composition. I would spend days or weeks on a painting and then end up discarding it because it was poorly composed at the beginning. Fortunately, I found some great resources to study composition, such as Tim Packer’s online courses, and dozens of books on the subject. Some of my recommendations are Harley Brown’s Eternal Truths for Every Artist, Mastering Composition by Ian Roberts, and Strengthen Your Paintings with Dynamic Composition by Frank Webb.

Is there mission driving your creative journey?

My primary mission is to become the best artist I can possibly be and to never stop learning and improving. I also hope that my story can inspire other artists to pursue their creative passion. So many young people are discouraged from going into the arts by their parents or teachers as it isn’t a straightforward path and success isn’t guaranteed. I was very fortunate to have the full support of my family when I told them about my dreams of becoming a full-time artist, and it really helped me to make bigger plans for myself. If I didn’t have that support, the path to where I am today would have been much longer.

Becoming a full-time artist isn’t easy, but it’s certainly possible through hard work and perseverance. I hope that my story can serve as an inspiration to aspiring artists to believe in themselves and foster their talent, no matter their background.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://valentinefinearts.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/emilyvalentine_art/?hl=en
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/emilyvalentineart/
• Linkedin: https://ca.linkedin.com/in/emily-valentine-a3036822b