We recently connected with Rin Varga and have shared our conversation below.
Rin, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Do you wish you had started sooner?
This is an intriguing question for someone like me who’s always known she wanted to be an artist from childhood, but has had several different “starting” points that make me wonder when I’ve truly begun. I’ve come to realize that as an artist, you will be forced to start over many times as you grow, learn, and try new things as you chase the path that’s most authentic for you.
As I was finishing college in 2016 and about to graduate wondering how to start my future art career, my sister (and fellow artist) and I met a local author who lived in a house just off campus. She had several ideas for children’s books and needed help bringing them to completion, so for a while I would go over to her house after class to collect pages that she’d drawn. Then I’d clean, edit, and arrange them as a graphic designer after hours in the computer lab. Once I’d graduated and helped her self-publish several of her books, she offered me the opportunity to work on the continuation of one of her series as its official illustrator.
I have to admit that—despite how incredibly grateful I am for the opportunity to work with such a sweet woman as my first client on a real children’s book—as my very first attempt at a project so big, as a new graduate who’d only just learned how to use Photoshop despite all the practice I was getting, and as someone who spent the first year and a half of post-graduate life exclusively creating for someone else, the style I’d been drawing in wasn’t completely my own I was understandably feeling lost wondering what my own style, direction, and authentic voice as an illustrator was. I wanted to prove myself both as an illustrator and as a friend by following through on my commitment, but halfway through illustrating the next book in the series, I reluctantly told had to tell the author that I wasn’t going to continue with her series. I had to find my own voice, work on my own portfolio, and make art just for myself.
From there I had many moments I thought would be my first real “start”: I created my first social media as an artist simply to experiment with my own personal art and participate in the annual Inktober month-long challenge that takes place every year, giving birth to my current brand name, Lavender Stew. I landed real clients designing their logos, tattoos, or other projects and got paid real money. I opened my very first online shops, including Storenvy, Redbubble where I’d release monthly designs, Etsy, Spoonflower, and Ko-fi. I built my own official website using WIX, and opened a Ko-fi account where supporters can see exclusive content and get rewards like Patreon. I created an entire children’s book dummy mockup of my own and submitted it to a Clavis Publishing contest.
In addition, I learned that my college degree had woefully underprepared me for what I actually had to know and started investing in 8 week online courses for continuing my essential life-long education—not just how to be an artist, but a creative entrepreneur who can market themselves, set goals while working towards them in tangible steps, and wear many hats as I reassessed how everything fits together every few years (especially when adding multiple streams of revenue to the already delicate balancing act of an art business!).
Over the last eight years I’ve gained both the confidence and skills to consider myself a true professional artist, but the journey hasn’t been without its dead ends and challenges. I’ve been stopped many times in my tracks, I’ve had to start over and rethink everything from scratch, and I’ve had to admit to myself when something just wasn’t working or didn’t feel right for me. I’ve had months or even a whole year where I’ve made virtually no art. I’ve been so drained of energy from part-time jobs to pay my student loans that I’ve had no mental energy left to create at the end of the day. I’ve gotten my momentum back and created a new style that I highly enjoyed to the point I was making more art more quickly and consistently than ever…only to get into a car accident that left me without the use of my dominant hand and so much fear I couldn’t even think of creating again for half a year.
I’ve been slowly chipping away at my artist dream little by little, and even if I wish I could have known what I know now and start over going strong, I’m so glad that every time the brain fog has lifted I’ve found a little more clarity every time. Most importantly, I’ve NEVER been discouraged to the point that I gave up on wanting to be an artist completely. All in all, despite my rocky start with twists and turns, or being drained of time and energy because of life or part time-jobs, I’m finally proud to say I’m starting my 30s with a new vison, a new plan, and a new path.
Just this last fall when I left my twenties behind, I decided to start fresh and take as many steps as I can to start living the artist life I want NOW. I asked myself what I want to do for myself, and what would serve me best not just in the moment, but in the future. I asked myself, what made me happy as a child? What had I envisioned my life to look like as an adult illustrator? I also realized what a huge mistake I’d made getting in the way of my own motivation and progress—I’d been focusing on the wrong kind of illustration!
I’d spent years focusing only on what the artists around me do: product design. Instead of just creating products such as stationery or surface pattern designs, I wanted to create something meaningful to me. I wanted to tie people together. I wanted to tell stories. And the thing I always loved the most as a child was my books—I imagined what it would be like to be the person who creates someone else’s core memories and sparks future generation’s imaginations. So I’ve pivoted all my attention towards the path that feels most aligning to me: publishing art!
Over the holidays I started researching editorial illustration and book cover design. I’ve begun planning a new portfolio to pitch to art directors, magazines, agencies, and publishing houses. I quit the food service industry for good and have promised myself never to go back to and industry that is so terribly unsuited to someone like me, and focus on uncovering the strengths I do have instead of those weaknesses that, for a while, were all I ever saw.
I was overjoyed in January to be accepted into a new clerical part-time position working for the forest preserve district, which luckily has given me a lot more time to focus on my art career (and will still help me pay student loans) and taken the pressure off of making this new path be my sole income as I start this new beginning. I just completed a class at my community college to refresh my mind on how to utilize Adobe Illustrator and create professional vector art for magazines and books.
This spring, Lavender Stew will be becoming just one branch of “Rin Varga Illustration.” Even though the timing feels unfortunate at the time I’m writing this interview, I’ll be changing the name of my website to use my own name so that I can have the freedom to explore more paths in the decade to come as well as let my art be associated with my own name. I feel like everything I’ve built so far is making room for all the growth I’ve gone through until now, and I’ve never been more excited (or certain) of what I want to do with my art. Wish me luck as I discover what new “beginnings” the future still holds!
Rin, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?
I’m Rin, a botanical illustrator getting back to her roots in publishing art after almost a decade. I started out in college working on children’s books with a local author, though something didn’t feel quite right creating for such a young audience. After much trial-and-error, I’m starting again in 2024 building a new portfolio that will be focusing on editorial illustration and book cover design for middle-grade and YA audiences (particularly gothic horror, dark fantasy and LGBTQA+ themes). The pandemic has helped me find a more authentic direction, and I believe that exploring a genre such as horror is reflected both in my past personal art and the deeper purpose behind why I want to be an artist/creator:
I wanted to inspire and create a space for others who might feel lost, uninspired, and trapped in life. Especially to other introverts who have BIG feelings, dreams, or goals that they can’t express very well, it’s essential to find a place where they feel they can just be themselves without fear—and I wanted to provide that. Through books, I’ve been studying the connections between horror, anxiety, resilience, and the ability to become braver while feeling more connected to the society around us. I recently read an interview from Publishers Weekly discussing which genres have grown in popularity over not just this past fall, but the pandemic as a whole: ‘ “Scary books for scary times” is how Tiffany Liao, executive editor at Zando, helps explain the trend.
‘HarperCollins executive editor David Linker offers a similar take. “Horror has a long history of reflecting the concerns of our times—and right now, for us all, but particularly for young readers, it can feel like there’s a lot happening in the world to be scared of,” he says. “Horror helps kids indulge and then release their fears, at least for a little while.”’
My art so far as Lavender Stew has always used nature to explore motifs and themes of what’s hidden under the surface, including wonder, resilience, and fear. Nature isn’t just a source of inspiration for my art. It’s been an essential part of my own personal growth journey, it’s been part of my healing process, and it’s been my motivation to connect with both something larger outside myself and deeper inside myself.
The most I ever felt “at home” on the internet was when I started documenting my own progress, thoughts, and experiences in 2019 as I began sharing my “wanderings” that gave me so much joy—it could be the creek by the park behind my house, the huge trees just down my block, the nearby forest preserve, the sound of rain outside my window, or the flowers that just bloomed in my own backyard…that kind of “everyday magic” was something that made me feel alive, and sharing that with others allowed me to attract some wonderful souls who connected with me on a deeper level.
Not long after, in 2021, a bad car accident left me paralyzed with fear of the outside world. Going back into the woods and volunteering with my local forest preserve finding and documenting mushrooms helped me overcome the severe anxiety that was keeping me trapped and uninspired, and soon my artwork started to change into what you see today as my reasons for creating and what I wanted to express changed with it.
And so Lavender Stew (which will now become just one branch of Rin Varga Illustration) has become a place where we can grow together, discover our strengths, and sit with our fears together through the natural and imaginary world around us. I’ll still be happily creating botanical art, selling my own products in my shops, working with clients on tattoos or logos, and seeking a collaborative, attentive, and adaptable life as the full-time artist I know I can be. The form of my art may be changing, but the meaning behind it for me has become stronger than ever.
We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.
The pandemic could have been the time I quit being an artist when, in reality, it cemented even further in my mind the entire the feeling that I HAD to be an artist.
By 2019 I thought I knew the direction I wanted to take my Instagram, my life, and my art…but I had no idea how to do it, or where to even begin. Looking back, I’m surprised that I managed to make any art at all that year since burnout and hustle culture had taken over my entire life—my studio art degree had earned me a part-time job for paying off my student loans at a bakery, but waking up at 5am for two years while also making new friends, online dating, exploring the many miles of forest preserves in my area, and trying on new hobbies like rock climbing, longboarding and swing dancing left me with no energy to create, let alone pick up a pencil.
I knew that I wanted more time for my art, but I desperately needed to recharge and take the time to get to know myself not only as she was, but who I wanted her to become. I ended the summer of 2019 quitting my job at the bakery with so much relief and no plans other than “to go traveling.” It was my year of self-discovery, and not a week after my last day at the bakery, I’d packed up my car to take my very first solo road trip up the Mississippi River to Galena, IL to figure out my next steps.
That summer, I looked at my inner motivations and how they reflected in my actions as I journaled every day. I studied personality theories such as MBTI and the Enneagram. I made it known that I wanted to travel and so, together with friends new and old, I went camping for the first time, I stayed in a lake house on Lake Michigan, I learned to kayak, and I practically lived out of a suitcase until the fall.
Things might have gone on like this, but I realized that continuing at this pace would eventually mean the end of my savings, the end of my adventures, and the beginning of another soul-crushing job. I didn’t want to work in food service again—I knew very well that I wasn’t suited for it, my skills weren’t being used to their full potential, and the weaknesses that are brought out in that line of work were actually tied to other hidden strengths I didn’t realize I had until I’d taken a step back. So just before the winter, I’d started working together with a life coach. At first I’d just been planning to work with someone to hold me accountable as I looked for another job to pay my student loans—all the while holding onto that very convenient excuse that “someday” I’d switch to art, but in my blur of my strengthening sense of self, I was realizing that instead of running away until I ran out of money and started the cycle of burnout all over again, I wanted to learn how to become self-employed.
I procrastinated my weekly tasks of updating my resume and combing the job sites, and instead I found myself drawn towards other searches that consumed my brain and kept me up at night until I could finally admit to myself the start of the dream I truly wanted to chase: I wanted to be an artist…full-time. I remember vividly the feeling of my mind lighting up like a Christmas-tree out of excitement, opening five different browser windows with over fourty tabs on each, and covering my entire room with piles of papers I’d scribbled on as I fell down a rabbit hole researching everything I could think of related to becoming a self-employed artist.
My excitement lead me to the vastly and equally overwhelming realization that my college degree had taught me literally nothing and hadn’t prepared me at all for the truth of being a self-employed artist: you’re not just a “creator,” you need to be a “creative entrepreneur.” What did I not know? How could I find out? Who could I talk to? The deeper I dug the more I discovered just how little I knew, and the longer the road ahead seemed to look. There are an unfathomable number of choices leading to an even more unfathomable number of potential outcomes, and by 2020, I had to accept that I was officially learning how to be a small business owner from the beginning.
When I’d been going crazy from burnout and sleep deprivation at the bakery, I began escaping to the woods every chance I got. There are over 166 miles of trails in my county, and it gave me the room to think, breathe, and become grounded in my body again. I started sketching easy things, things that I could see with my eyes like mushrooms and leaves and flowers, and eventually I thought, “what better way to get references and inspiration than to become a mushroom monitor volunteer?” It’s my now job to find, photograph, and record the data of whatever mushrooms are growing in my favorite preserve, and this up-close and personal immersion let me dive into a new style full of rich earthy tones, bold shapes, and natural textures. I was thrilled to have found such an easy outlet for all my stress that also allowed me to feed my art and use real life to create new landscapes in my imagination, and I’d been creating art faster and more frequently than ever before.
That July which, looking back now, could have lead me towards the idea of editorial illustration for nature magazines three years sooner, I got into a car accident that would put me out of commission for the next half a year. My car was destroyed, my dominant hand got so much shock from the impact that I couldn’t properly use it for a month, and even then I had to build my strength back up to even write my name properly without the pencil shaking. I remember art being the farthest thing from my mind—for the first time since the start of the pandemic, I truly felt trapped, isolated, and stuck inside with no way to make money.
Without my car, I was left with no escape to the woods and I felt trapped inside my home unless I took a walk. As a passenger, I had such extreme fear knowing that the seat I was sitting in beside the driver was what had been destroyed in the crash that I couldn’t ride without curling up in a ball and panicking whenever we turned left, exposing me to oncoming traffic. When I tried driving myself short distances, I’d break down crying in relief when I made it safely to my destination. And at home, I was constantly surrounding myself with soft blankets, pillows, and stuffed animals so I wouldn’t remember the impact.
For a while I forgot all about art—how could I push myself to draw again when I was crying over being unable to brush my teeth properly with only one hand? I fell into a depression until 2021 when my family took me on a road trip up to Lake Michigan, and my sister told me in tears that the restaurant she worked at was in danger of closing if they didn’t get more people to help. With much doubt and reluctance, knowing that I was the kind of person who sinks instead of swims in such a fast-paced job, I agreed to help “just until they found a replacement.”
And so, until this last fall, I put my art dreams on hold one more time to help other people who needed me more. However, this time, there was a difference—I was no longer thinking of myself as a waitress who did art on the side—I was an ARTIST who worked five days a week and then helped out at a local restaurant on weekend evenings. I was NOT going to let myself forget what I’d decided I wanted for myself. I’m happy to say that the restaurant is doing better than ever, and I no longer felt the guilt of abandoning my sister or the owners or my coworkers if I wanted to quit. My thirtieth birthday approached in September, and I made an exit plan to leave at the beginning of the new year to take my future into my own hands.
All the dominos I had set up before the new year have been lined up and are going off to my extreme delight: I got accepted into a new part-time job that I love and allows me time to work on my publishing art portfolio, I’m building a list of connections and places to begin applying to once I have enough completed work, I just completed a class on Adobe Illustrator so I can build my skillset and add to my resume, and I’m even in the process of planning new social media pages as well as a website makeover to showcase my own book cover redesigns for classics such as The Picture of Dorian Gray and Frankenstein.
I feel like I’ve gone through more struggles, mental blocks and fear in the past three years than I ever did as a new graduate trying to find her own voice. But looking back at what I’ve tried, what I’ve drawn, what I’ve gravitated towards and what I’ve eliminated as my focus, I can see how all the pieces were falling into place to get me where I am today. It feels strange to seem like I’m “starting” my illustration career all over again at thirty after so many changes that all happened so quickly, but I can also see how I wouldn’t have half the motivation or certainty that I do without the resilience that got me through college, through my first steps, and through my twenties. It’s going to be a good decade, both for me and for my illustration journey!
Looking back, are there any resources you wish you knew about earlier in your creative journey?
I can’t stress enough how helpful, motivating, and wonderful the Creative Pep Talk podcast by Andy J. Pizza really is!!
Not only was it what helped me learn “how to learn” as an entrepreneur–not just an artist–as I decided to study what it truly means to become self-employed back in 2020, but it’s helped me create the framework for how I approach my workweek, how to ask big questions and reevaluate my progress when things aren’t working, and it’s even helped me connect with one of my best clients who was a guest speaker in one episode!
Andy has such a wonderful appreciation for the quality of life we have as artists, he really understands what a community needs to thrive, and I’ve heard so many lost artists like myself find their way again after tuning in to this podcast. If I could only recommend one artist resource to get you started, I’d say that this is the resource to help you find ALL the resources, no matter what kind of art you want to make!
Contact Info:
- Website: https://lavenderstew.wixsite.com/mysite
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lavender_stew/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/lavenderstew/
- Other: Upwork: https://www.upwork.com/freelancers/~0177a864ce3ab396bd Ko-fi: https://ko-fi.com/lavender_stew Etsy: https://www.etsy.com/shop/LavenderStew Spoonflower: https://www.spoonflower.com/profiles/lavender_stew