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

Laura, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Can you talk to us about how you learned to do what you do?

My mom is a wonderful oil painter and very creative, so as a kid she always had some kind of artsy project for me to do. She always had paper and paints on hand for me to play with and never balked when things got messy. I tried a lot of different types of art as a kid but when I was in high school I got very interested in photography. I majored in art in college and while I was still mostly focused on photography, I also enjoyed a wide variety of mediums like oil and watercolor painting, ceramics, and printmaking. After I graduated I got a job as a production designer for an art publisher/licensor. I signed with them as a photographer and made some royalties on the side from all the photos I had accumulated through school and traveling. They had a big studio with a few in-house artists and encouraged me to play around in the studio if I had some free time. That is where I discovered gouache and pretty instantly fell in love with it. I learned the basics through a lot of Youtube and Skillshare videos, and there was also a lot of trial and error. Through gouache, I learned that it was ok to make bad art and to try things that didn’t work. Without the pressure of a classroom environment I could take my time and the stakes were low if I failed at something. It had been a while since I had done art purely for the fun of it and gouache still gives me that feeling years later.

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

Primarily, I am a gouache and watercolor painter and landscape photographer who has found a niche in the surface design and wall decor world. I work for an art publisher and licensor called Wild Apple Graphic here in Vermont. When I first started at the company I was a production designer doing mostly art recoloring/resizing, some product templating, and catalog layout. Over the years as I developed my artistic skills and cultivated a unique and sought after style of gouache and watercolor painting, I moved into an in-house artist and junior art director role. I spend much more of my time now creating and directing trend-forward art collections based on trending themes and color palettes. The clients I’m creating collections for include wall decor, stationery, dinnerware, rugs, fabrics, kitchen and bath, and giftware. When my free time permits, I also do some freelance work for various clients including custom wedding stationery, book cover art, product labels, and logo design.

We often hear about learning lessons – but just as important is unlearning lessons. Have you ever had to unlearn a lesson?

To be an artist in any discipline comes with a lot of expenses: paint, brushes, paper, canvas, clay, ink, chisels, cameras, film, developing chemicals, etc. I didn’t grow up very wealthy so in school it felt like I was always scraping together money for another tube of paint, another roll of film, just one more piece of the good photo paper. The materials I had were precious and I couldn’t afford to waste anything. This created a lot of pressure to not mess up and gave me very little room for experimentation. Once I had the means and time, I found it hard to break out of the no-waste mentality. I still felt like I had to do everything perfectly the first time and sometimes this meant I didn’t even try some of the ideas I had for fear of it failing. I started having to very explicitly give myself permission to make mistakes, to make things that weren’t usable. It took some time, but eventually I became a lot more comfortable with making art that was just plain bad. Even though I used extra paint and paper, it was never a waste of time. I always gained something from the mistakes.

What do you find most rewarding about being a creative?

I still get a thrill whenever I see my artwork in a store somewhere, I find the world so beautiful, so to be able to share the world I see through art and have people connect with it and get happiness from it is so special and rewarding.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.lemographie.com
• Instagram: @lemographie

Image Credits
Laura Marshall