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

Julia, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. What’s been the most meaningful project you’ve worked on?

I’ve recently worked on a few projects that are very meaningful to me. The first is my watercolor painting titled “Storytelling at 27.” It is a bundle of flowers I painted in a bouquet while exploring the meaning of “home” to me. In it, there are state flowers from places I’ve lived (New York, Arkansas, Tennessee, Georgia), as well as my partner’s favorite flower and the national flower of the Philippines. I worked on this piece one flower at a time and really took those quiet days of painting to focus and reflect on the stories associated with these places, the people in my life at those times, the memories I’ve collected and hold dear to me.
Another project that comes to mind is my series of paintings conveying nostalgia. I was recently a featured artist at Atlanta Chinatown’s celebration of 36 years in town. I wanted to share some pieces of my childhood and culture at the festival and painted four paintings: “Kitchen Essentials,” “Lola’s Mahjong Set,” “Balisong Swarm,” and “Halo-halo.” As with the storytelling bouquet painting, I also wanted to use this project as an opportunity to depict parts of Filipino culture that stand out to me. Cooking and sharing food, playing games and teaching others, being strong in moments of grief, making something refreshing and (not too) sweet out of whatever life gives you.

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.

I’m a multidisciplinary fine artist. I’m a portrait artist, a tattoo designer, a sketchbook doodler and painter of cool stuff. I am available for live portrait sketching at your festivals, markets, weddings, and other events. You can contact me for booking and custom artwork. I also have a background in industrial design and graphic design. I think working in those fields sparked a strong interest in creating work that is helpful to others: human-centered, empathetic design. I would say what I’m most proud of is the wide variety of projects I’ve gotten to do that share light with others. Whether it’s a quick ink portrait sketch or a sentimental painting they’ve commissioned from me to gift to a loved one, a web design that brings their own creative visions to life, or a project personal to me that happens to resonate with someone else–being able to share with others the joy that art brings me is the thing I’m most proud of in my work.

Do you think there is something that non-creatives might struggle to understand about your journey as a creative? Maybe you can shed some light?

I think a common misconception is the label of a “non-creative.” To me, that’s just someone who hasn’t tried. When was the last time you ignored the perfectionism or the fear of judgment or perceived failure and just made something? When was the last time you let your inner child express itself? Who told you that you aren’t creative?

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

Support artists by supporting artists! Especially living artists, hello! Buy their art, have conversations with them, learn from them, share their work with your friends!

Try to stop seeing everything as a cutthroat competition. I think there are healthier, more effective ways to motivate and inspire genuinely creative work than pitting people against each other for the sake of “marketing.” If we prioritized community over commercialization, we could make so much cool stuff together. No one is doing what the next person is doing. There’s no issue with having a preference or your own tastes, or even recognizing levels of skill in someone’s work; but to say an artist is “worse” because of your own preference is so silly to me. Putting people down doesn’t help anyone, and it’s not the compliment you think it is. (This comes with a note that I’m obviously not talking about plagiarizers, people blatantly intentionally copying another’s work with malice, etc. And big box mass-produced/AI-generated art is not art. It’s usually stealing!) Another thing to keep in mind is how ubiquitous art is in your daily life. People easily forget how often they are encountering art and design on a regular basis. Think of the clothes you’re wearing, the music you’re listening to, the TV show/movie you’re watching and remember that they wouldn’t exist in the way that they are without artists and designers.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.jaysketchbook.com
• Instagram: @jaysketchbook
• Other: TikTok: @jaysketchbook
  For Custom Artwork: [email protected]