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

Joey, appreciate you joining us today. What did your parents do right and how has that impacted you in your life and career?

I have a lot to thank my parents for when it comes to my creative journey. Some of my very favorite earliest photos of me show me making giant messes on paper with paint and drawing materials. I think my parents either always knew I had a creative spark, or always wanted me to have one. They definitely set the ground work for art being more and more of my obsession then older I got.

They always came to my art shows in school, and always supported the work I did with positive feedback no matter how my style changed and morphed over the years, the perfect situation for annoy artist growing up I think.

Joey, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

Hello! My name is Joey Strain and I am a printmaker, illustrator, and graphic designer, and small business owner!

I’m 25 years old, and based out of Reading, Pennsylvania, and I’m a creator of all things whimsical, weird and wonderful. I’m a lover of bugs, plants, monsters, critters, and generally weird little guys, which also all happen to make up the bulk of my work as an illustrator and printmaker. I am an illustrator of self published zines, and three published children’s books and zines, and an avid printmaker with a blossoming small t-shirt printing business.

I’ve been creating since I was a child, and knew I wanted to be an artist when I grew up by the time I was 12 years old, (according to an old school journal) and have been chasing that dream ever since.

I have been creating art constantly and consistently since I was in elementary school, and posting it online consistently since I was in high school, instagram has been the home for my work since 2017, and I have amassed 1,500 posts on there over the years, which is an amazing milestone for me to have created that many illustrations over the years.

My primary focus as an artist right now is in the realm of printmaking. Of all the mediums I’ve worked in over the years, linocut block printing has become my absolute favorite method of creating, and ever since I started in 2021, it has been my absolute obsession ever since, and now its essentially the only medium I work in as an artist. The sensations I get from carving blocks of linoleum and then using them to transfer images onto paper or shirts never gets old, and fills me with joy.

How about pivoting – can you share the story of a time you’ve had to pivot?

One of the biggest pivots in my art career that changed my life forever, was realizing the only way I could continue to grow as an artist in the social media age, was to start creating video content as opposed to image content.

Since about 2017 I have been posting images of my art in various places online, with little to no growth of my overall audience. it became crystal clear to me that images just didn’t get traction anymore, and I needed to make a change in order to find an audience for my work. In late 2021 or 2022 I started trying to find ways to create video content of my work, like many artists online have done in the past few years, in order to stay afloat and stay relevant in a changing social media world. Instagram has always been the home for may art, and when it somehow transformed from a photo sharing app, to a video sharing app, I knew I needed to change the way I shared my work.

In a beautiful coincidental way, my work was beginning to change at this time too, I was becoming obsessed with printmaking, and was able to easily create videos showing the process of creating prints on paper and shirts with my little linoleum blocks. In doing this, my social media presence grew from under 5,o00 followers to 50,000 followers within the span of a little over a year of posting videos. It was a beautiful feeling to be creating work I’d never been so passionate about, and also creating an online family of people who love seeing me make the work just as much as I love making it.

Because of this boom in my social media presence, for the first time in my life, my small business online selling work is bringing in consistent income and helping me build my career as a self sustaining artist.

Is there mission driving your creative journey?

The ultimate goal of my creative journey is to be able to earn enough income from my personal artwork to work full time as a printmaker and illustrator, just making my own work that I love so much. Self sustaining off of my own work would be all I could ever ask for as an artist, and make me feel like a true success.

My full time job is working as a graphic designer, as that was the career path I knew I needed to take in my life in order to make reliable income to live off of, but still be doing creative work for a living that I can have some passion for.

When I’m off the clock, I am almost always creating and pushing myself to continue to build my audience and push my work to new and exciting places, and hopefully I’ll reach a point where the art I make brings in the income I need to live without a full time job in graphic design.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://strain-brain.com
• Instagram: joey_strain