Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Jennifer Kostuck. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Alright, Jennifer thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. We’d love to hear about when you first realized that you wanted to pursue a creative path professionally.

Like many creatives, I’ve been drawing for as long as I can remember. Even as I studied different subjects in school, I would find myself drawing much of the material for any project I could. I had so much encouragement all through elementary school and enjoyed pushing the boundaries of every medium I could get my hands on.

When I was in middle school though, I had two teachers that played a pivotal role in me losing the trust I had for my own creative process. I was told repeatedly that I couldn’t use color the way I did and that I didn’t use the mediums appropriately because of how much I experimented with them. After finally having a watercolor painting washed down the sink by one of those teachers, I got quieter with my work.

And then my home life fell apart.

I bounced through schools, and I lost a bit of myself. When I finally had a bit of normalcy return, I found myself in a new school. I was still drawing but I wasn’t sharing it with the world. It was an outlet for my emotions, and I had settled on a different career path. Drawing had simply become a way of keeping myself connected to the world so that I continued to live after what I had lived through.

That’s when I met my new high school art teacher.

He was persistent but also observant. He let me make my own choices and experiment with mediums again. I strayed a little from assignments and he let me run with that inspiration. If I looked like I needed a material, he’d help me get it. Little by little, he encouraged me to switch career paths and would ask if I really wanted that other career. I always insisted I did, we’d laugh it off and he just kept the paper coming.

I couldn’t afford much. I had a small set of nice color pencils that my mom had worked hard to get for me and that was okay. I loved that I even had a few. But one day this teacher brought me the biggest set of Prismacolor pencils they had made up until that point. I was confused as to why someone would do something like that for me. He made me promise I would keep drawing and that I would pass it on to someone else when I came into a set of my own. That was all he asked of me.

The next year in school, I had the realization that I wasn’t happy without art being at the forefront of my life. I needed it more than anything and it was the only way I could really communicate with the world. It had carried me through so much and it connected me to others in a way my voice couldn’t. I found myself in his classroom asking for help to switch the remaining classes for the year so I could be in the art room from the moment I got to school until the last bell rang. I had initially planned on graduating early but wound up staying an extra semester with nothing but art classes and completed my second AP portfolio. My guidance counselor asked me what I wanted to go on to become and I proudly said, “an artist” and she replied, “oh a starving artist?!” to which I said “no, I’m going to make a living with my art” and I left that office determined to make that my reality no matter what back in 2007.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

I’ve always preferred color pencil but over the years I have played with everything from found objects, fire, to oil paints. I finally found my way back to markers about two years ago and fell in love with the medium after initially not enjoying them years ago. Sometimes I think we need to experience life a little more to discover what really connects for our art. These days I blend them with color pencils and acrylic pens or gel pens.

I am currently working mostly independent with two separate global auction groups (Red Iris Art Collective & Eclipse Art Auctions) and have recently exhibited with Poetic Tiger Gallery. I sell original art, keychains, stickers, and I recently released a t-shirt collaboration and my first ever Diamond Art kit collaboration just came out! I offer custom, imaginative pet portraits when the schedule allows as well.

I started in realism and have worked over the years to create a style that blends realism elements with expressionistic brush strokes but fully loaded with color. I do not work with black or gray – every shadow and highlight you see is created with a rainbow of colors. I was heavily inspired by Rembrandt and Sagan in college, so I love to play with light in every piece, and my subjects are usually cast in the whimsy of the universe and world around us. I like to find the magic in the everyday and maybe push that question of “but what if”. I am incredibly proud of the way I use color and the whimsical playground of expression in how I use markers. I’m often compared to a certain 90s colorful animal artist but for grown-ups or asked if my pieces are created digitally. I just love the world around us, our connections to it, and the painterly expression of markers.

I hope people take a moment to wonder at the world around us each time they see one of my pieces.

How can we best help foster a strong, supportive environment for artists and creatives?

Support the arts – period. I offered free art classes to my community for a while and the thing I noticed the most was how disconnected people felt from one another and how hard it was to access the tools and education to be creative. For many of them, they hadn’t drawn since grade school and were fearful of it but knew there was this calling to at least try. Access to learning and materials was difficult or was buried in so much information it was hard to navigate.

The connections that I watched form and grow in our town through those classes were incredible. It spread into care for the homeless too which was something that I wasn’t expecting. I was watching confidence grow in people who previously had none in real time. Kids connected to the world around them through music and pencils and the community flourished where there was but the simplest access to the arts. Donations came out in droves of materials and we could make art with anything that was dropped off and what we couldn’t use, went back into other community programs. It became a hub for creativity, confidence, and community connection.

I so wish society prioritized creative expression, and all of the beautiful mediums and forms it comes in. It doesn’t need to be fancy or gilded up with expensive materials. There simply needs to be access to it beyond school and on into our lives as adults. Paint the walls of your cities and open your doors to it, no matter how simply, and it will help us all connect and thrive.

We’d love to hear the story of how you built up your social media audience?

When I first started sharing my work online, there were whole communities already built to do so, and social media was only just beginning. It was easy to put your work out there, build a community with it, and connect to clients. All you had to do was be yourself and post it. This has since changed a lot.

I kept trying all of the gimmicks and the hashtags but ultimately, it was the community that built the momentum again.

I gave up following social trends and instead focused on being my authentic self. I shared my raw stories, the human behind the art, the inspiration. I shared the wins and the losses. I actively sought out other creatives and commented, shared, supported in all of the ways I wished others would do for me. The entire time I did this, I kept pursuing the aspects of art that made me the happiest to try and find my true voice. That thing that makes people recognize the work of Lions & Yellowcake as Lions & Yellowcake. It sounds silly but genuinely, this is what did it. I gave people a reason to care for me – I was willing to care for them. My mom is a retired concert pianist, and she always reminded me to care for my audience because without them, I do not have a career. I did this but with fellow creatives as well. As cliche as it is, there is no competition with others. Just pursue the creative voice in yourself as hard as you can and share that with the world. People love the art, but it’s the story and the connection that builds genuine following. Van Gogh’s work is beautiful, but it’s the story and the human behind it that causes people to seek it out, to connect with it.

Sure, learn the mechanics of the apps you’re using and what times to post so you’re not competing with people’s lives and bigger entities. But don’t forget to connect with people and build communities too. I share my platform with other creatives always and it’s been so much fun and many of my clients are other artists themselves. You’ve got this!

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.lionsandyellowcake.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lionsandyellowcake/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/lionsandyellowcake
• Other: TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@lionsandyellowcake

Image Credits
Black Barn Collective Lions & Yellowcake