We were lucky to catch up with Shawn Adomanis recently and have shared our conversation below.

Shawn, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Are you able to earn a full-time living from your creative work? If so, can you walk us through your journey and how you made it happen?

While attending the University of Maryland for fine arts, I was a graffiti artist and drew all the time. At this time, I was 20 years old and had just found out that my girlfriend, now wife, Meredith, was pregnant with our daughter. Since I was not taking many art focused classes yet, I felt I could teach myself better than that school was. So, I left school to find a job in order to support our growing family. A family friend, Barry George, told me that he could get me a job making signs for the Anheuser Busch distributor in Annapolis, MD. Without much of any computer experience, he said that he could teach me everything I needed to know in about 45 minutes. After his crash course in computer arts, I applied for the job. When I met with the department head, Syd Saltzman, he asked if I had any prior felony charges. I had told him that I had been arrested for graffiti before. So, luckily, he said “We will put this down as on the job training.” Without these two men giving me a chance, I am not sure that I would be where I am today.

In 1996, I started my digital art career in Adobe Illustrator 88 driving a vinyl plotter on an ancient Macintosh computer. From there, I would spend years learning new graphics applications such as Photoshop, Flash, 3DS Max, AfterEffects, and even some programming. I would teach myself new tools on personal projects at night and any free time that I had. Once I gained more experience, I bounced from job to job every few years in order to feed my creative urges. I have worked in the Life Sciences industry for over 20 years. I am currently a Creative Director and work on everything from design to animation to medical illustration. I can proudly say that I make a comfortable living as a full-time artist.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

As a kid, I always loved drawing. My real passion started in 8th grade art class. I would endlessly draw comic book characters, hockey players, and band flyers. In high school, I started drawing and writing graffiti in the MD/DC area. I was never as much for tagging and getting up as I was for spending time making the best artwork I could. This art form opened my eyes and mind, but also pushed me to want to get better, paint more, experiment with other media. Essentially, never stop creating.

At the time, graffiti was still very taboo and not a way to make money. In order to support my family, I had to focus on my professional career as a digital artist, which meant working towards other people’s vision and not always my own. Over the years, I would still draw as much as possible and do an occasional painting now and then, but I would find myself becoming more and more out of touch with my personal artwork.

About 5 years ago, I reached a point of creative burn out in my professional career. It all became stagnant and a sense of deja vu. I felt that I had to focus more on my personal work. I needed to create with my hands again and not a computer, so I decided to solely concentrate on traditional medium. I started painting skateboards for auction to support a local skatepark. Then I decided to paint a series of 12 ink and watercolor pin-up girls with sea creatures. These paintings reinvigorated me and brought a balance between my professional and personal art worlds.

Over my 20 years in the Life Sciences industry, I have seen many fascinating, colorful forms in biology and chemistry at both the macro and microscopic level. In 2020, I decided to go back to oil painting after a long hiatus. I came up with the series Cultured Figures, which are figures based on mold and bacteria cell cultures and fractal patterns. The vision of the series is to present the perfection of the human form in what most would deem as disgusting. The visual realm created by these organisms is infinite, vastly complex, colorfully chaotic, and immensely beautiful. Part 1 consists of 10 portraits and was completed June 2022. Part 2 will consist of full body figures and is currently in progress. To this date, this is the most proud of any artwork I have ever created. I feel that I could continue this series and style for many years.

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

Most people have their own way of being creative. However, not everyone can be a artist. An artist can invoke an emotion, tell a story, or keep an audience engaged in an object they have created from nothing more than a thought in their head.

Creating a piece of artwork is, in a way, like having a child. You dream it, mold it, refine it, nurture it, love it, teach it, and learn from it. Once you get to that point where you feel it can stand on it’s own, you send it out into the world be shared, judged, admired, and tell it’s own story for the rest of it’s life. The best aspect of being an artist is that I can continue to create over and over again.

I truly love seeing and hearing how another feels from something I created. When someone finds a different meaning or vision in my work than I intended, that is my biggest reward. To know I invoked an emotion.

We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.

Even though I have been an artist for most of my life, I happen to be colorblind. This has been a blessing and a curse at times. I do struggle with skin tones and accuracy when trying to replicate something from life, especially in traditional medium. My wife has been called over to the easel to answer many a color questions.

In a digital realm, it is easier to deal with colorblindness, because you can sample colors and check hue, value, and saturation. However, I always feared being fired or looked at negatively, so I never disclosed this to any employers. It was not until I started at my current job in 2009, when a coworker said that he was also colorblind. So I did not worry so much and said, “So am I”.

As a colorblind artist, I try to be very conscious of my color balance and combinations. It is probably the main reason I paint in a more saturated manner. It is also a driving force to make sure I am making the right choices. This was another reason why I chose to use a wide range of colors for my series Cultured Figures. In a sense, it was my way of not really caring if a color was right or wrong. I am just painting how I see it in my head.

Contact Info:

• Website: shawnadomanis.com
• Instagram: @shawnadomanis
• Facebook: facebook.com/shawn.adomanis
• Other: shawnadomanis@gmail.com