We recently connected with Meam Hartshorn and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Meam, thanks for joining us today. When did you first know you wanted to pursue a creative/artistic path professionally?

Growing up I was always interested in creative activities like drawing, creative writing, and music. While I had so much support and encouragement to pursue my creative interests, I was also inundated with the message that it was impossible to make art your career. I think in my heart I always knew I would enter a creative profession, but it wasn’t until midway through my undergraduate degree that I started to consider it. I studied Psychology and Studio Art, with plans to become a therapist and to make art for fun. During this time, I was exposed to several working artists who served as expanders for my own career aspirations. They exemplified the many ways artists can make a living off of their work, educate others, and explore their creative visions. I started to educate myself on art as a profession and I put my work out there. With continued experimentation and slow but steady growth in my own exposure, I saw the potential of making my work a career. I am still on this path, which all artists have to cultivate resilience in order to stay on, but I’m thankful for the support I have to keep growing in my artistic career.

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 am a visual artist and arts educator. I’m originally from Grand Junction, CO, but I have lived and worked in Austin, TX since graduating from Kenyon College in 2021. My paintings have evolved a lot throughout the last few years as I continue to hone in on my personal artistic voice. While this can be frustrating sometimes, I am still so early in my career, and I’m grateful to be in a place where I can let my work shift.

My paintings are abstracted and expressionistic, pulling inspiration from natural formations and transforming them into undulating atmospheres. Through cycling movement and sharp value changes, my work has both an intense and ephemeral quality. Much of my previous work has explored the temporal relationship between human experiences and natural cycles, like our relationship to erosion or succession. While shades of this concept still resonate in my current work, I am starting to see a shift in my paintings as they address more directly emotional and internal landscapes. For me, art is often an extension of myself, whether or not I am consciously aware of it. My paintings are a means of this expression, creating a visual bridge between the outside and the inside, and I hope others can feel and empathize with the emotion there.
In addition to painting and exhibiting work, I work part-time as a teaching artist with a youth development program called Creative Action. I am also in the early stages of creating an online art collective, called The Artful Collective, dedicated to helping amplify the work of emerging artists. Throughout my own journey navigating the art profession, I noticed the benefit of collectives in helping showcase artists’ work, but I also saw there were few designed for emerging artists and even fewer run by working artists themselves. My goal with this collective is to cultivate opportunities for emerging artists to share their art and access resources to help them achieve their creative goals. I’m so excited about where this is headed! I’m one of those people that thrives while juggling multiple projects, so it’s an exciting time in my life right now.

I am most proud of the growth in my character throughout this process. I have come up against many limiting beliefs, frequent rejection, and continuous pivoting, but I am more confident and resilient for it. I remember where I was just a year ago, fresh out of college and questioning every decision I made. While I’m still growing and learning, I’m proud of the progress I made and I look forward to the future of these new projects!

Any resources you can share with us that might be helpful to other creatives?

Yes! I remember being in undergrad and craving answers to all my questions about how to make money from art, how to get seen, and how to build an artistic community outside of school. In art school, you typically learn just how to make the art, but learning how to be an artist, from both a professional and personal perspective, is found out by doing it.

Online art collectives are a great place to begin. You can see working artists doing their thing, which is very expansive, and you can connect with mentors or coaches. If it is within your means, it’s a worthwhile investment to work with a mentor who is familiar with the business nuances of art or who offers courses in gaining traction for your work. I worked with Victoria J. Fry from the Visionary Arts Collective, and it was a game changer. If a mentorship isn’t accessible, I recommend free content from “Getting Your Sh*t Together”, a funny but also incredibly helpful blog for artists, and the books “Art & Fear” by David Hayles and Ted Orland, “Show Your Art” by Gita Joshi, and “How to Be an Artist” by Jerry Saltz. These continue to be helpful resources for me.

The best resource for artists is time. Carving consistent time to be making work was the most helpful thing I did since graduating college. It doesn’t have to be much, just consistent, and it will make the process of understanding yourself as an artist, improving your skills, and exhibiting your work much easier. At the end of the day, artists want to be making their art, and if that is something you are achieving while working a fulltime job, or raising kids, or juggling the many other responsibilities of life, I respect and commend that so much.

What’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative in your experience?

For me, the most rewarding aspect of being an artist is making my art. As I mentioned, my artwork is often an expression of my own internal experience. In many ways it’s therapeutic, even when it’s frustrating. I know that making art will always be a part of my life, regardless of the status of my career. Right now, my goal is to build a career that enables me to both make art, but also help others continue to make it too.

Contact Info:

• Website: meamhartshorn.com
• Instagram: @meamhartshorn
• Other: The Artful Collective can be checked on on instagram @the.artful.collective and online at www.theartfulcollective.com