We recently connected with Fantasía Graham and have shared our conversation below.

Fantasía, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Are you happy as a creative professional? Do you sometimes wonder what it would be like to work for someone else?

As an artist, am I happy? Haha, I live a life that I can honestly say I’m happy about. If I could describe how I feel, doing what I love, I would have to say I am very content. With that being said, feeling content allows me to constantly reach further within my field. There’s this piece of me that has always wanted to be an art professor, whether it be drawing or painting, so who knows. To look at being an artist as an irregular job, is what I believe push art programs to be cut/underfunded within schools. When we study art inside of museums, are amazed by larger than life murals, cry after watching movies, read books that take us out of reality, think about our first loves when we listen to songs; I wonder why people don’t look at what has been done by creatives and consider their field as “inspiring jobs”. I’ve had a regular job before, I’ve had an important job before, and now I create. I tell stories, I emote emotion, I can’t help but look at what I do and consider it a beautiful job. There’s something to love about that — I suppose that’s something to be happy about!

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

Well, as a Chicago native, I can’t help but start this one by saying I’m a Chicago native, haha. I’ve been painting for about 10 years, been drawing for a little longer than that. When I was a child, I feel as though my parents were rather creative people, they weren’t solely into being artists, but they displayed their love for art enough for me to also enjoy creating. I did not take my art seriously until my last two years of high school. I wasn’t aware that being an artist was an actual option, I used to think being an artist was a rich person’s hobby.
It wasn’t until the death of a classmate, that my enjoyment of creating would turn into my escape, my safe space. I realized that my art was providing the same escape for others. That was when I realized, creating was something I really wanted to continue doing.
I mostly create portraits, some of those people being people I know, people in my community. I look at my work and think of my pieces as mirrors for the audience to look into, and see a part of themselves. I believe we can all relate to one another, we just have to look for it. From photography, small paintings, Bic pen drawings, to murals, depicting people, telling their stories, it’s what I love to do.
When it comes to my work I always strive to capture a mood/emotion, which can be tough when you’re working with faces. Though it’s the small details in stories that can determine just how impactful an ending is. That’s how I feel about my work. There are details that I pay really close attention to so that in the end, when you step back and look at it all, you see it –all.
If there is one thing I can say I am most proud of about, I would have to say it is my versatility. I don’t stick to just one medium, I don’t move in only one direction. I allow myself to learn, as well as experiment with different styles, materials, etc. That’s something I believe is pretty cool.

What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?

Y’know, I believe when you spend most of your life in school and then after graduating, you’re sort of just thrust into the “real world”, you forget that your decisions are all your own, that you’re not being tested, that someone’s not about to give you an assignment. Something, I had to unlearn was thinking I needed someone else to tell me I was good enough to pursue my passion, to pursue creating as a career. Almost immediately after graduating, I worked as an assistant teacher at a Montessori school, I would be in that school for 3 years. Despite my friends and family, telling me I was good enough to be an artist full time, I had been waiting for “someone” to tell me “Yes, they’re all right. You’ve got this, go for it.” I don’t know who I had been waiting for; I’m not sure where I was suppose to find this imaginary person. During my third year of teaching at the school, the pandemic happened, protestors were restless. There was this huge surge it seemed, this crazy call out to artists. Every one was reaching out to artists, asking them to paint what they couldn’t say alone. It was within that year, that I had finally heard a voice say “You’ve got this, you have to go for it, you need the time, you need the space, you need to create.” I didn’t realize the person I had been waiting for, the person to believe in me, to push me forward, was me. Having the support of your peers, family, and friends is so very important. Supporting and believing in your own capabilities, is a necessity.

Is there something you think non-creatives will struggle to understand about your journey as a creative?

Hmmm. I have always been artistic, but I am a creative by choice, it is still something I chose as a career. It is something I love to do, but I don’t view it as a hobby of mine anymore. I’m only saying this because there are times, non-creatives seem to not understand just how much time goes into creating something, start to finish, with little to no assist, just how much time I spend “working”. Some artists work where they live, some artists pay to have studios elsewhere, a way to change their scenery, to have the right space. Though artists are choosing to follow their “passion”, it doesn’t change that they’re working, that they can still feel stressed, burnt out, even a tad bit bored, or stuck. Being a creative can be wonderful, but it would be nice if more people acknowledged the hardships that might come along with it as well.

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