We recently connected with Robyn Ivy and have shared our conversation below.
Alright, Robyn thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Let’s start with the story of your mission. What should we know?
I’m an artist. Creation is very personal for me- not only does the process help me cope with what’s going on in the world, but viewing it is a reminder that we can create the world we want to see. I create for myself, but I hope that what I make helps others cope too. Separately from my art- I lost a close friend of mine a few years ago. He happened to be one of my biggest supporters. He also happened to have a hard time coping with reality. His memory became a part of my mission and in October I launched a fundraiser for Javone’s Rose, which will benefit kids in the community we grew up in and hopefully one day across the country.
Robyn, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?
I’ve been drawing since pre-school. For me, it’s always been about creating from imagination- taking an image or colors that are in my mind and translating it into reality. Today i work in a variety of mediums. I paint, but I also do a lot of work in digital. Working in a digital space has taught me a lot of patience. It can be difficult to represent an organic subject like a person or flower digitally and it took years for me to be able to recreate natural looking hair and wrinkled skin. I’ve spent the last 10yrs learning how to do just that. The piece I’m most proud of is Phenomenal- a digital portrait of Maya Angelou in her later years. It’s mixed media, because I decided to paint the edges gold- the first piece I did that for, which has become a staple of my digital printed canvases, but it was also the first portrait I really spent time on to get the skin’s texture just right.
Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?
Pre-2020, I was selling art and producing/curating shows around Brooklyn. Our most successful show was January 2020. The following week my business partner and I moved into a booth in a market in SoHo. It felt like we had peaked at the time. Everything was so exciting, opportunity was everywhere. We were there for a little over a month when the world shut down. The market was looted about a month later and we packed up. Over the next few years I had to find myself again. After losing one of my closest friends I knew there wasn’t time to waste. I poured everything into re-discovering myself and getting serious about the future. As soon as I could I began showing my art again, networking, and meeting new people to build with. I was lucky enough to find a women-owned art collective – The Culture Candy. They’ve been so supportive on my path to finding my voice and helping me find opportunities.
Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?
After shutting down our booth in the market, I wanted to keep our community inspired by curating shows on Instagram live, like a lot of people were doing back then. I felt let down by my business partner who was also a good friend at the time. I began to think that mixing personal with business was a bad idea, like a lot of people say and i took it to heart. Over the past year i realized that the lesson I thought i learned was incorrect. Don’t build businesses with friends just because they’re your friends. Find people who match your passion and work ethic and build with them. Community is important and beautiful things grow from being around the right people.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://linktr.ee/eyeofrobyn?fbclid=PAAaY7rE7FBvnCUX1YmvP8L3LfTW0Yn1D32rz9FIPofU6kjAULgMamw18yFbM_aem_Aahq8KWB9CGCRb0_-LFqCblgN5YWCEvddhQrflR3vFiSJYkrR7xAQpKmBkuta7YVQTE
- Instagram: @eyeofrobyn
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/robynsilev?utm_source=share&utm_campaign=share_via&utm_content=profile&utm_medium=ios_app
- Other: Www.be.net/robynsilev
Image Credits
Robyn Ivy