We were lucky to catch up with Natalie Kreidler recently and have shared our conversation below.

Natalie, appreciate you joining us today. Do you wish you had waited to pursue your creative career or do you wish you had started sooner?

I started a “creative career” during my first year in college, pursuing fine art alongside my school work because I had realized that was what really made my life feel rich and that’s what I wanted to be doing with it. I started to take commissions and do art directing for musicians pretty quickly after I decided to pursue art seriously.

I don’t think I started at a bad time and I’m thankful now for all of the experience I’ve had- but I’m definitely realizing I could have taken it slower and not worked myself so unnecessarily hard with school and art at the same time. I just wanted to make something happen with art so bad that I felt like it had to happen right then, but I could have maybe enjoyed the time being a baby artist and just creating for myself and growing artistically for longer. Because of that, I feel like I’ve now hit a point where I’m taking time to refocus inward and nurture myself and my own practice in order to really get to where I want to be artistically instead of career-wise.

While I’m so proud of myself for accomplishing the things I set out to do, having gallery shows, designing album covers, living full time off of my art, I’m realizing now I didn’t need to be in such a rush to do it. It is so amazing that I’ve had the opportunity and have worked so hard to get myself to all of these points but up until the last six months, I was really approaching it like I had to achieve everything I wanted to or was going to achieve RIGHT NOW or it would never happen.

I want to tell myself and all other creatives that there is time. It’s so hard to have access to social media and see all these people succeeding at such a young age and feel this stressor that you’re “behind” but that just isn’t the case. Every single bad painting I’ve made has taught me something to use in a painting that was “successful” in a market sense. Everything you want to do will be there, there is always room for my art, there is always time to do more create more, everything does not have to happen RIGHT NOW. Following pleasure and personal growth first is something I’m relearning and something that has ended up paying itself back into my career in way deeper ways than all of the material successes that it’s so easy to get caught up in chasing.

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

My name is Natalie, I’m a student about to graduate from University of North Texas’ communication design program, and I’m a self taught fine artist. Right now I do fine art commissions, graphic design including brand strategy, stage design, art direction, and installation work. I love working with other artists such as writers or musicians and across multi disciplinary pursuits. I think design is so interesting because it gives me the chance to help make other people’s art become even more powerful, and the opportunity to work with other artists is endlessly inspiring.

I really want to work across every creative field because I love learning and love pursuing new avenues for creativity so much, and I think my specific background has set me up really well to do that. Having a degree in communication design has taught me to approach visual communication in a very scientific way as a problem to be solved, and teaching myself painting, sculpture, and installation work with no guidance has given me the confidence paired with the problem solving skills to take on any creative pursuit, and that’s probably what I’m most proud of. Pursuing so many creative fields helps me maintain a childlike joy that I think is so essential to me. Encouraging curiosity in myself and others is a very central pursuit.

What can society do to ensure an environment that’s helpful to artists and creatives?

It’s hard to answer what “the best” thing society can do to support artists is because really the most detrimental thing to art I think is capitalism. The commodifying of art and the necessity of having to appeal to consumers has hurt art so badly. Artists having the ability to create without having to create a product is really the best thing that could happen for the creative ecosystem. Something interesting I think though that I’ve wanted to try out implementing myself, and have heard of as a norm in some countries, is “renting” art to hang in your home instead of buying it. The price of a lot of original art just isn’t accessible for a lot of people, yet the prices are necessary to adequately compensate artists for their work, so instead of having to put down a chunk of cash in order to experience art in your home, there are programs where people rent art for some smaller fee, and they can then have the access to rotate different art through their home, artists can have their work shown around multiple places, get paid monthly, and the amount of people who get to have art is way broader. Everyone really does deserve to have access to fine art, specifically originals, but I know that the current way the art market is structured just isn’t realistic for the majority of the population, and art becomes something that often only the rich get to enjoy.

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

Always getting to come home at the end of the day to painting.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://nataliekreidler.myportfolio.com/
• Instagram: @ugh_natalie
• Twitter: @ugh_natalie