We were lucky to catch up with Kavita Megha recently and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Kavita, thanks for joining us today. We’d love to hear the backstory behind a risk you’ve taken – whether big or small, walk us through what it was like and how it ultimately turned out.

I think the biggest risk I’ve taken was moving across the country about three years ago. I grew up in Massachusetts, and at the time was living in Boston after graduating. To be totally honest, I didn’t know what I was doing with my life. We were at the beginning of a pandemic lockdown, which (like I’m guessing is true for many of us) gave me space to realize how lost I was. I always had a somewhat clear life trajectory by virtue of growing up relatively affluent and in the context of my family. Even if the particulars of what I was going to do were not set in stone, there was an understanding that I would follow expectation and choose a stable life. Stable financially, at least, and without significant personal challenge.

Anyway, at the time of our move I was 23. I lived in a third-floor walk-up with my best friend. I was unemployed. I was not in school. I was drawing a bit. I figured I’d live in the city for the near future and follow a similar career and life path to the people I knew there. All in all, there was not much to me.

We had been musing for a while about going someplace else for the summer. One day, after a Zoom meeting with some peers about a local free food distribution we organized, my roommate and I were talking about our life in Boston and how we felt about it. It was in that conversation that I finally admitted things weren’t working. I was in this life, seeing the vision of the future I had for myself for years, and I didn’t want it. It wasn’t for me. But I didn’t know anything else, hadn’t tried anything else, so the only thing I could do at the time was say no to what I did know. That day. we made the decision to move out of Massachusetts – started packing boxes, bought plane tickets, the whole deal. That was March; by June we were living in a smaller city in the Midwest where my best friend is from. And we’ve been here ever since.

It’s maybe the only decision of mine that I’ve never questioned. People move for jobs, romantic partners, families. I did it because I needed to leave, and because my dear friend wanted to be here, and I wanted to be with her. It wasn’t a difficult decision; Boston was never a home for me, and where I am now is. There are ways I have found space to explore creatively and personally that I never experienced before. The risk, I guess, was in leaving everything I knew to move somewhere I had never been, with the person I trust the most. But I have known far riskier things than to put faith in true friendship and gut feelings.

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.

At my core, I am an illustrator. I draw, and have been for the last four years or so. Starting back in the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, I played around with portraits of friends and family for something to do. I enjoyed it so much that I kept working at it, and found I wanted to grow my skills. I owe a lot of this growth to the people in my life who have challenged me, encouraging me to practice both my technical skills and my imaginative ones. In particular, as I have searched for ways to collaborate instead of create in solitude, they have pushed me to consistently find new ways to do that.

Now, I work in a variety of analog and digital mediums for a variety of purposes, which means I always get to try something new. Besides my own practice, I am a second-year tattoo artist, a commissionable illustrator, and studio/graphic arts student. My work arises from a revelation in the experience of storytelling and a desire to share that experience with others – for the stories familiar with the light of day, and the ones we keep in the shadows. I am most proud of the ways I work to be receptive and adaptable in the field, and my ability to bring to life the ideas that live in the minds of my clients and collaborators for their unique audiences (and themselves).

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 actually quite a few of us struggle to understand what a creative is. When discussing the limitations and possibilities of formal artistic training, a friend of mine said that “there are those who do art because they need to be creative, and those who do art because it is their discipline of choice.” There are creative people across all crafts, fields, and industries; conversely, doing something artistic does not inherently make one imaginative or innovative. These are traits I believe shine through in our decisions to pursue non-traditional options in all facets of life. So, if there’s anything I would like folks to understand about my journey, it is that I am not just a person who happens to do art. I am a person trying to be curious, explorative, and deliberate in everything I do, with everyone around me.

Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?

Probably to stop trying to make a perfect product and simply practice. So often I, and I think other artists as well, try over and over to make a really solid, aesthetically pleasing piece. We fight back and forth with ourselves trying to force something to work. Or we lean on the things we’re already familiar with because we think, “well, this has worked so far.” We focus on the end result so much that we miss all the parts of the process that actually contribute to our growth, the ones that created the circumstances for that particular end result to even appear.

So to practice – the one thing we often don’t want to do because it’s not the thing we can show off to others – is probably the most important thing we can do. Maybe the only thing we actually HAVE to do. It wasn’t until I started committing myself to this – to trying new things, to approaching each thing from many different angles, and to reframing my so-called failures as learning opportunities – that I started to see a change in my work and myself.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/itskavitamegha
• Other: Portfolio: itskavitamegha.crevado.com