We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Sarah Goone. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Sarah below.
Alright, Sarah thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Earning a full time living from one’s creative career can be incredibly difficult. Have you been able to do so and if so, can you share some of the key parts of your journey and any important advice or lessons that might help creatives who haven’t been able to yet?
I always knew that I wanted to be an artist. Even without a super clear picture of how it would work out, I have always believed that something would come together to let me build a life creating art. I went to a liberal arts college with a concentration in the visual and performing arts, and during that time I explored many internships to try different things out in the creative world.
Right out of college, I made sure to only work part time jobs so that I could devote the rest of my time to creating art and trying to find how it could become the main focus in my life. I was still not certain what direction I wanted to go with my art at that time because I have always had so many interests. For example, during those first few years out of school I worked in freelance puppet fabrication and performance, puppet wrangling, created a few short puppet shows, started a business drawing realistic dog portraits, worked on a stop motion music video for a friends band, and worked on countless other random artistic and creative projects. I tried to start a lot of different things, and a lot of them did not last very long.
Eventually, I found that the freelance lifestyle was hard on my health, and I was ready to get into more of a routine. At the time, I was giving bike and walking tours of Chicago for my part time gig, and I decided to start looking for something more stable. I interviewed at a few animation and video companies, applied to as many creative jobs as I could find in Chicago, and even looked into some graduate programs for either animation or set design for film.
One day I was perusing Chicago Artist Coalition, an online hub for artist opportunities, and I found a listing for a job at a place called Ink Factory. They were looking for visual artists who could be trained to do live visual note-taking. I had no idea what that was but I looked at their website and immediately knew I had to apply, it looked like the coolest place to work. Their work combined a lot of my interests and looked like it would be both a learning experience and a great way to make art on a daily basis for work. After a long interview process, 12 weeks of intensive training, and almost 5 years at Ink Factory, I still think it was the best decision I made to let go of the idea that the only way I could succeed was by creating my own business and only doing freelance work. Finding a full time creative job that supported me financially, let me work surrounded by awesome and inspiring people on a daily basis, and helped me grow as an artist and as a person was a perfect way to make a living as an artist.
That hasn’t stopped me from creating another side business, though. Although working full time as an artist is fulfilling, I still need to feel like I am putting my own vision and creation into the world. I’ve done a good amount of freelancing since starting at Ink Factory, and starting in 2021 I have had my own side business selling my art. There is always a give and take of time and energy to build my own business, but I think having a stable artistic job while I slowly create a brand that I can have total freedom with allows me to try things out without the pressures of needing to provide for my needs all on my own. In a lot of ways, it gives me full artistic freedom to do it slowly and steadily.
Sarah, 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?
For some background info, I’m a multi-disciplinary artist, and my current work is largely focused on illustration, painting, and murals. I work full time as an illustrator and visual note-taker at Ink Factory, and I run the education department there to teach people how to take visual notes. I have been very interested in drawing for most of my life, and I have always gravitated towards building imaginary worlds through illustration. Since I am led by a sense of curiosity and always wanting to try new things, I have also taken many different artistic routes that got me here. After a few years of trying to learn stop-motion animation in my free time in high school, I went to college thinking I wanted to study animation. But while there, I ended up somewhat accidentally in a puppetry internship, and that became my focus for the next 4 or 5 years. I built two puppet shows while in college, had a few puppetry internships, wrangled puppets on set for some TV shows, and did some freelance puppetry building and performing out of college. After getting a job as an illustrator in Chicago, I found I didn’t have much time left for puppetry, so I circled back to my initial love of illustration and painting.
My own current practice is focused on creating art that sparks a sense of wonder and playfulness. I am a color aficionado, and I love to use color in my work to interact with spaces. I envision a lot of my work in the context of the spaces it might be viewed- in a home, store, hotel, on the side of a building, and everything in between. I grew up surrounded by my parents’ love for midcentury modern design. Because of this, I also have a strong passion for interior design and my art is meant to be a focal piece in a space that makes people happy. I have always had a soft spot for bright, retro motifs and playful, organic shapes, and that shows in my work. It is most activating and reaches its fullest potential when it is large scale, whether as a painting or a mural, and truly transforms someone’s experience in a space.
To create my work, I often lead from a meditative state. I take the time to create space in my mind to open up and work in flow. I even combine elements that I record from my dreams, mixing the subconscious mind into the physical world. I trust what comes through me in an intuitive way, often incorporating shapes and patterns found in nature. When I mix that with a color palette I have set, the piece has balanced movement in it, with places for the eye to rest and think and then move on.
I currently sell prints, original paintings, and murals, but my ultimate dream is to design full spaces. That means creating a large statement piece for the space, and coordinating all of the decor and styling to make it an immersive experience. I recently did this with a client’s bathroom- painting all of the walls and ceiling to coordinate with their color scheme and transform the space into an alternate reality. So when someone is willing to take a risk and go out on a limb with my vision, it lets the art truly shine and leaves the viewer with a memorable experience.
What do you find most rewarding about being a creative?
Being able to create the things that I want to see in the world is the most rewarding aspect of being an artist. I have a very active visual imagination, and have always had ideas of what I wish existed in physical space. As my skills have grown and my style has evolved, the ability to create a magical world like what is in my head is the coolest and most rewarding thing. Especially being able to bring other people into my mind by showing them what I see, that’s one of the closest forms of connection that I can hope brings other people joy and wonder.
Is there something you think non-creatives will struggle to understand about your journey as a creative?
Being a creative person and wanting to spend your life creating can be a very non-linear path. Although I am a very goal-oriented person in many ways, I think that the value of creative experiences is more important to me than having a clear cut path for where I am going. For example, taking a few years out of college to intentionally work part-time jobs that were not really related to art so I could have time for creating my own art was a very different route than trying to have a clear career path lined up right out of school. And making art takes time- not just the process of actually creating a piece, but time for thinking and dreaming and having space open in my mind for ideas and inspiration to come through. And time for life experiences that can then inform my creativity in the future.
I think for me the most important thing so far has been to follow my curiosity and let it take me down rabbit holes for as long as it feels right. If I am still full of awe and learning new things, I tend to continue following a passion. That is how I ended up immersed in the world of puppetry for some years. And then something new and intriguing showed up in my life and I am currently in the phase of illustration and painting and visual art. If sleep was not a necessity and I could be in 5 different places at once with 5 different jobs or projects, I totally would. It is hard to take breaks or balance my time and settle down because I am so passionate about trying new things, creating, learning and improving skills, and being surrounded by interesting and eclectic things. There is no real boundary between being creative and not being creative. I spend my day at work, coming up with creative visual solutions and representations of complex concepts, and then I come home and all I want to do is draw or paint and create more. So, it’s unclear sometimes what is work and what isn’t work.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.sarahgooneart.com
- Instagram: @sgoone
- Other: Society6: https://society6.com/sarahgooneart iCanvas: https://www.icanvas.com/canvas-art-prints/artist/sarah-goone?product=canvas&sort=popular
Image Credits
headshot: Emily Lindeman