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

Ginger, 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?

Earning a full time living as an artist/visual creator is no joke. It sounds like such a glamorous and fun job, but I think a common misconception that people don’t realize is the hustle that goes into it & the struggle of creating art that is fulfilling to your inner creative and taking on commissions so that you can pay the bills. It truly is a balance of those two things.. I find myself in situations all the time where I am surprised that I am doing what I am, and I am constantly wondering if I am doing the right thing. It just goes to show that even when it seems like people do have things figured out, they are going through it just like everyone else.

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

I’ve always loved creating, Doesn’t really matter what it is, I like creating things with my hand, and I take pride in curating things that look nice, that could be from staging a little corner of your home, to making an email look more aesthetically pleasing, I enjoy making things look good.

In college, I pursued a double major in Graphic Design and Business Marketing. Marketing seemed like a safe choice, and Graphic Design seemed like a reasonable major to have in the creative field. Realistically, I took a typography class and fell in love with that and pursued the major that dealt with that most in depth.

Fast forward to senior year, I was the only Graphic Design Major in a Senior Inquity class with a bunch of Fine Art Majors. We had to prepare for an end of the year art Gallery and I had no idea what I was going to do . I knew I liked typography, so I taught myself traditional calligraphy, mastered that and then turned it into something that felt more like me, which is how we got this messy sort of font that is my signature style.

I have always preferred working with less color, preferably just Black and White, so I focused on that and it has since become sort of my trademark style.

Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?

I think the life of a full time artist requires you to be resilient every single day. This is my first year doing this full time, and even though on the outside everything seems to be working well or things seem to be going well, at least once a week I ask myself “is this really what I should be doing” because while it seems like a dream to work for yourself and I do feel very lucky to be able to do this, there are a ton of sacrifices you have to make. There are months when things will all work your way and you have record sales and then there are months that you might not make anything profit wise and that’s really hard to sort of ride that wave as you are getting started in your creative career. Building a supportive community of friends, family, mentors is so helpful to help you weather those storms.

What do you find most rewarding about being a creative?

You can literally make anything you want. Art is for everyone and everyone likes different things. So chances are, someone somewhere is going to like your art. You don’t have to put yourself in a box, you want to learn a new medium – do it. You think your art is too niche- its probably not.

My work specifically is super messy, that’s just the style of it, but that is what makes it beautiful! People like seeing imperfections in art because it makes it more relatable, more human, If you think you make art that other people wouldn’t consider art, make it anyway and call it art.

Contact Info:

• Website: gingercc.com
• Instagram: @ginger_cc
• Facebook: gingerccdesign

Image Credits
Gabriella’s Perspective