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

Shauna, looking forward to hearing all of your stories 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?

Art as a career, is notoriously synonymous with words like “starving” and underpaid. In fact, that’s a large part of why it took me so long to lean into my skills and turn them into a career. After so many years of being told that it’s impossible to make a living off of art, it just became fact and I rarely questioned it.

Now, as a full time creative, I’m earning double what I earned in past careers, While the income can be inconsistent, there is almost always a demand for my skills. I think that is where there is a disconnect, both artists and patrons alike forget to look at art as a skill. It’s really no different than someone who can fix a sink, write eloquently, or hit a home run. It’s a skill that just like any other ability, needs nurturing, practice, and honing in order for it to be profitable, but there’s always a demand.

The real trick of being a successful 21st century artist, is bending the demand to fit the art that you want to create. We often forget that the old masters weren’t necessarily painting the subjects that they wanted to paint, but rather worked based on commissions. It wasn’t until the early 18th century that art for the sake of art really began to take off, and it wasn’t until the Impressionism movement of the 1900’s that artists could build a career around painting whatever inspired them.

Any creative can take on commissions they don’t care about just to pay the bills, but true aptitude comes from finding a balance between what sells and what you actually want to create. I don’t think there’s any way of ever speeding up this process, it’s something that each artist has to learn individually. It’s painful and tedious, but in the long run it’s what makes being an artist worthwhile.

Shauna, 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?

My company, Bailey Art Studios, is almost two years old. I started out by selling art to Orange County home stagers and realtors who were looking to fill luxury homes with art that would help inspire buyers to take them off the market. Once I fully committed to making art full-time, I painted a little bit of everything – not quite knowing how to group my artistic skills into a set style. After a summer of being invited to paint plein air paintings live at Newport Beach’s Lido Marina Village, I realized that I was being drawn to textured oil landscapes.

From there, I started bring my landscape-centered approach to the quickly growing wedding painting industry. I saw a lack of variety in the live painting options at the time, and strongly felt that an important moments should be captured on canvas in an expressive way, using classic art techniques and compositions (rather than just replicating event photos). I’ve spent the last year attending 30+ weddings and events, capturing each one on canvas in a unique way. Because of that, my landscape paintings have now earned a reputation of their own and I’ve started incorporating high quality art workshops and art prints into the list of products and services I provide.

To me the most valuable thing I can provide to my clients and followers, is inspiration. A fresh perspective on life, on colors, on their own skillsets. I want my art to remind the world that there is magic in everyday life, you just have to look for it.

Is there something you think non-creatives will struggle to understand about your journey as a creative?

I think the biggest obstacle I face with non-creatives is explaining just how complex and time consuming art is. It’s interesting to have people reach out to me for help with any creative project they come across. While this is flattering, it’s akin to asking a baseball coach teach you how to swim faster. All creativity is not the same, all art is not the same, each category is highly specified. And while I may be able to shed some insight into other categories, the work I do requires particular tools, techniques, setups, mindsets. To switch to another creative project, like photography or graphic design, it’s not quite as easy as putting down a paint brush and picking up an iPad.

I often find myself describing painting as map-making, or completing a puzzle. Every brush stroke, every color, is a decision. And behind each decision are years of training, hours of studying, and a ton of internal debate. That in itself is exhausting, and when an artist is creating that is what they are consumed by, hundreds of tiny decisions – everything else goes silent.

I’m not sure if there will ever be a way to fully convey that to non-creatives, but one of my favorite things in the world is getting them to understand that just a little bit, because in my opinion THAT is when they truly begin to appreciate art.

Are there any resources you wish you knew about earlier in your creative journey?

YOUTUBE. I cannot preach enough about YouTube. I spend at least 45 minutes every morning filling my day with new art information through YouTube videos, at this point I’m pretty sure I’ve learned more there than I ever did in art school. With art, you have to know exactly what it is that you don’t know, in order to be able to find the answers. To this day, there are still tools and techniques that I had no idea existed, until I watched another artist’s process online. And while there are so many downsides to being an artist in the times of viral TikTok’s, the upside is that we’re getting to see into other artist’s worlds like we never have been able to before. I wish I had known this years ago, because I think I would have been less hesitant to get started. But even now, I feel like I have all of the answers at my fingertips – whenever I run into a problem I don’t know how to solve, I can almost always find another artist who has tackled it before and put their experience up on YouTube.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.baileyartstudios.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/baileyartstudios
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/BaileyArtStudios
• Other: https://www.theknot.com/marketplace/bailey-art-studios-seal-beach-ca-2065493 TikTok: @bailey.artstudios