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

Alright, Lew thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. How did you come up with the idea for your business?

I went to school for Art and ended up doing Web Design for 15 years. I decided to get back into artwork. So I started with acrylics and along the way got introduced to watercolor which up until that point I had not had much success with. I decided to paint the way I wanted to paint with them. My first piece I did was a street scene of my town’s Main Street. I used exceptionally bright color and expressive style and posted it on social media. Friends started asking for prints and the business took off.

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 always knew I would be an artist. My aunt would bring out a cup full of markers and pens and I would sit and draw. I was perfectly content.

I knew what I wanted to do.

After a brief stint in another direction in school, I enrolled at Rochester Institute of Technology in Rochester, NY and majored in Illustration.

A professor I had was extremely inspirational to me in that he was so talented. I would be enthralled watching him do demos of his process. I graduated and moved to North Carolina where I have been in the User Experience field since the mid 1990’s.

Lew Wilson Art started out on a post to social media and has since branched out into a second career. Having never been a Small Business owner it has been so enjoyable to watch it grow.

We offer ornaments and prints for towns, schools and colleges. We donate a portion back to every school we paint and have added several artists to our team to paint.

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

I was told growing up that being an artist is a struggle AND you will be living around the poverty line for your entire life.

I have been astounded how untrue that is. I have a theory that the starving artist was made up to garner sympathy for artists :) though I could be wrong.

Can you tell us the story behind how you met your business partner?

My business partner is my wife. She was busy doing marketing when someone asked for an ornament. After a couple of YouTube videos she created the first ornament. To say that took off is an understatement – in fact it is now the cornerstone of the business.

Contact Info:

• Website: lewwilsonart.com