We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Sharon Seals a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Sharon thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Let’s jump back to the first dollar you earned as a creative? What can you share with us about how it happened?

My first experience earning money as an artist was around age 12, drawing my dad’s wildlife photographs. He is a wildlife photographer specializing in North American game, especially white-tailed deer. I often attended events with him where people in the hunting industry gathered, many of whom owned world-record deer—similar to famous bucking bulls.

At one event, I sat outside the door sketching while waiting. Some attendees noticed my drawings and asked if they could auction them at a benefit. The sketches sold, and I even received requests for more. That was the first time I made money from my art. Back then, I also traded artwork for deer and elk antlers, which further reinforced my passion for wildlife art!

Sharon, 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?

So, originally my dad, being a wildlife photographer, he worked pretty much his whole life doing that. That was his full-time career as far as I can remember and he really instilled a sense of work ethic in me. Just working for yourself. A lot of people grow up with the 9:00 to 5:00 family. I didn’t realize that people took the weekend off until I started school and we got to go home on the weekends, I just thought you worked all the time! Not saying he worked 24/7, we did a lot of family vacations and such, and I can’t say that being out in the field taking photos of wildlife was necessarily the worst job in the world. Through the years I have had nine to five jobs but they’re just not really for me. I like to be able to get up and work whenever I’d like to, as long as I want, or on whatever I want. So, I definitely love that aspect of it and I’ve always taken that to different measures. I have my own tattoo studio. I’ve been a tattoo artist for over 10 years, mostly specializing in wildlife but I do a little bit of everything, and from there I just this last year decided that I wanted to create artwork full-time and try and sell my work. I don’t know. I just decided that it was nicer to sit around and drink coffee and paint stuff instead of dealing with online clients and it’s been going really well. I just kind of started selling my artwork on canvas and it’s morphed into a variety of other things.

I’ve recently been painting on hides, skulls, saw blades. People have asked me to do vintage leather goods like jackets, apparel bags, those type of items and it’s kind of taken off from there.

I like to work with unique canvases, particularly being from a large hunting family. I love utilizing the parts of the animal that honestly most people throw away these days. You wouldn’t think it, but a lot of people do and I like seeing those hides not go to waste and it is quite an interesting industry these days to find those. Most people only look at furs and hides for decor or fashion and some of those don’t work for that. Like cowhides, we eat beef every single day and that hide goes to waste unless they decide to tan it and turn it into a rug or something, this happens all the time with deer hides, most people in rural communities will actually set them aside for people to utilize if they can, most of us feel the same about using all the parts of the animal if you can. So, I like that that’s able to be used and I try my best to repurpose old stuff like my leather jackets and apparel, which I usually find vintage stores,

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

The most rewarding aspect of being an artist or artistic person for me personally is probably the freedom and that you get to express yourself even if I actually am doing more work, for example, I’m up all hours of the day and night making art. So, if you compare an artist’s time that they take to what they get paid in a normal person’s job we work so much, otherwise, though I’m just going to be sitting around watching TV, so I feel like it’s not an actual job in my head. It doesn’t feel like actual work, and I think that’s really healthy for a person to be doing a job you love.

I also do love the smaller artist communities and that a lot of galleries try and promote others. They help with fundraisers and other community support systems and I think that is a really unique part of the artist community as well. I am really happy to be able to contribute to those types of events, fundraisers, and charities. It obviously cost my time and effort but it’s more of a rewarding experience. It doesn’t cost me as much material-wise. It’s just something I can do and contribute to society so that’s pretty cool as an artist to be able to do that and make people happy and help.

Alright – so here’s a fun one. What do you think about NFTs?

This is a fun question because we’ve all gotten the NFT scams. I’m actually a huge fan of them, but not yet. Yeah, they’re on the blockchain. Everybody laughed at blockchain in general and thought it used to be a scam years ago and obviously look where Bitcoin and stuff is at, so I think people just mostly don’t understand them and I’ve looked into them enough to know what they are and such. I have created some, nothing for sale, just messing around so I knew what it was. Unfortunately right now, I think a lot of people just don’t understand what they are. They had kind of a little bit of a fan craze and now they’re just known as a scam thing. I do think in the future though they’re going to be big.

My artwork specifically though, while I am selling prints and trying to do more reproducing of things, mine is specifically more of an original piece as I am working on a hide. You can’t recreate this in NFT form, every single one of my pieces is unique as you’re going to have a different goat hide every time. No two are ever going to be the same so using that turning that into an nft like mine as physical objects would be really hard, so it’s not really something that I’m into at the moment. I would like to eventually create some because I wouldn’t be surprised if in the next decade or two they do become a thing that people are catching on to more. We’ve already had people spend lots of money on them so they’re obviously going to be sitting there and wanting to make their money back at some point! And I think once everybody understands what a blockchain is, like these kids growing up with nothing but phones in their hands since they were little are definitely going to understand it better, and once they have money they’ll be able to buy them as well. So I definitely think it’s worth looking into learning about them.

I see a lot of newer artists or older aged artists trying to ask questions about them in groups. My advice, f you don’t know it, don’t do it. Look into it and put it on your back burner or something, maybe it will be worth learning for some people some daay! I don’t know if that’s to each their own though, most artists aren’t into technology and most technology people aren’t really into art, so it’s going to be an interesting border to see how it crosses paths.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.cutthroatartstudios.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/skinneysealsart/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/skinneysealsart
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ssealsart
• Other: https://www.tiktok.com/@skinneysealsart

Image Credits

Sharon Seals