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

Mark, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Are you happier as a creative? Do you sometimes think about what it would be like to just have a regular job? Can you talk to us about how you think through these emotions?

It’s strange to think of myself as “happier” as an artist. For most of my adult life I’ve had a regular job. I spent 17 years in advertising and I was happy there for the most part. I did art in my free time and participated in numerous gallery shows and sold a lot of my work there or at craft shows and the like. There were definitely hard times in advertising. I went through lots of late hours, worked weekends, layoffs, bad clients etc,, but it was good money and it allowed me to pay off my students loans, buy a car, build a savings, do lots of traveling and in general live fairly stress free (at least money wise that is).

Even now I don’t work full time as an artist. I teach part time and still do some graphic design freelance. It’s important to have this money coming in to keep me financially stable. As an artist I’m happier, but I have much more financial stress. Everything is a trade off and there are always pros and cons.

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

I’m an artist and have been one for most of my life. I work both digitally and traditionally and my work revolves mostly around character portraits of mythological heroic characters of my own creation. I’ve taken to describing my work as contemporary mythological portraits. I am very interested in mythology and multi-culturalism and the idea of the hero. I often create characters that are embodiments of some sort of ideal and/or are protectors of some sort. I spend a lot of time reading and studying myths and use bits and pieces of those stories to build my characters.

In terms of things I’m most proud of I think I’m just happy whenever I complete a body of work. I often start lots of different projects and I find that finishing things is the hardest part for me. I most enjoy the process of making things so I just want to find ways to continue doing that and getting that work in front of as many people as possible.

In your view, what can society to do to best support artists, creatives and a thriving creative ecosystem?

I think, for whatever reason, there is still a general consensus in America that creative people are unserious or that art is not a serious career. It would be nice for people to understand that artists are hard working people and that what most of them strive to do is to depict some part of the world that is important to them. Art touches so many parts of people’s lives and few understand how much of the world creative people have contributed to. It would be great if people would treat art and creatives as something serious (where it needs to be) and just as important as a doctor or a lawyer. We aren’t saving lives per se, but we sure as hell are making it worth living

I would love to maintain and even increase government funding for artists, more support and unionization for creatives in fields like gaming, special effects, animation, comics and more. Artists in these industries are notoriously overworked and in many cases underpaid. Artists must be held in higher regard and not looked down upon.

Is there mission driving your creative journey?

My current goal is to build and maintain and audience that looks forward to each new thing that I create. I would also love to be able to maintain a financially stable life from the things I make. I love what I do, I just need to make a decent amount of money doing it.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://marksarmel.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/marksarmel/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/marksarmel

Image Credits

NA – all images by me.