We were lucky to catch up with Sofia Margaret Irigoyen recently and have shared our conversation below.
Sofia Margaret, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today We’d love to hear about when you first realized that you wanted to pursue a creative path professionally.
The first time I knew I wanted to pursue art professionally was later than usual for people in a similar position as me. My whole entire life had revolved around making work that meant something to me. Some of my earliest life memories were ones of scribbling on paper and admiring the way crayons produced lines and shapes and color. I would get lost in the art assignments I had even as a kindergartner. I made friends because I wanted to draw faces and experience seeing someone’s face light up after giving them their own portraits. It was a deeply personal experience for me, once I started going to public art school and expressing myself through my work. I knew art was everything for me, but it began to turn into my personal journal of sorts. I would paint my night terrors, or display my feelings about my family’s inner turmoil. I didn’t have the confidence the to realize what a superpower it was to create such intense work.
Art was truly the only thing I could do to make sense of the world. It was a no brainer to study art in college, but I grew uneasy every time someone gave me their unsolicited advice on how I should anticipate never making money, or that I had such a pretty face and personality to be wasted in the art world. It was discouraging, to say the very least.
I never intended to put myself out there as an artist professionally until I began approaching the beginning of my senior year at college when everything started to click. My work was reaching people, specifically women, on a deep intimate level. During my senior showcase, after months of grueling work creating my last assignments, hours of critique and artistic vulnerability later, I sat there and realized that a life without art and making work that resided with people was not a life at all. I realized I am a fully capable, hardworking individual that technically could do anything I wanted to. But, I would be utterly devastated if I gave up doing this full time. It was in my bones to make art, I then needed to figure out how I could accomplish having a successful career in doing so.
Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.
There is a word for the feeling of experiencing the warmth of the sun during the cold winter months that really resonates with me and my feelings about art. Apricity, the glimmer of light and warmth during the experience of darkness and the cold. I would like for my work to be experienced how that word may describe, as if people are encountering a part of themselves they had once lost or thought was not there anymore. The warmth of a shared experience, through visual story telling is a rare a sacred thing to encounter, much like the sun on a cold winters day. The nature of my work is deeply unique, whether it be my personal art, or my wedding painting business. Both come in contact with a feeling that is rare and special. There is nothing like painting the moment a bride and groom recognize that their life as a married couple has just begun. Or capturing the excitement of guests attending the bride and grooms once in a lifetime party none will ever forget.
I have, since my earliest adolescence, been chasing with a pen and ink, or paintbrush in my hand, the moments that connect us all as humans. The deeply personal cannot express with words moments that everyone knows but so few explore. My clients are precious to me. Each one I am able to connect with in a different way to translate those moments into visual reminders of memories meant to be recognized every day of their lives. I believe this is what sets me apart from other talented wedding painting businesses, it’s not just a name and check mark off a list of clients for me, it’s the privilege of getting to capture a lifetime of memories into a canvas.
Since graduating from Flagler College in 2023, I have not stopped pursuing my dream of being a full time artist. In any capacity possible I learn more about myself through working with clients and problem solving my own business questions along the way. I have already had my personal work shown in Art Fields 2024, and have since continued apply for more opportunities that may continue to feed my craving for art and pave way for my next steps.
With my spring schedule of wedding paintings coming full speed ahead, I will be able to focus completely on those events which will be a catalyst in moving forward in my art career.
Are there any books, videos or other content that you feel have meaningfully impacted your thinking?
A friend once recommended a book I would have never happened across if it weren’t for them. “The Obstacle Is The Way” by Ryan Holiday will forever shape the woman I am into feeling capable of taking on my own art business as a whole. From thinking I was never capable of actually putting myself out there, to now feeling confident in myself as a small business owner and creative, there were parts of this book that allowed me to break out of my constant state of self doubt and apply healthy goals in my life. From learning in any possible circumstance that failure is limiting mindset and that it’s only up to me and the things I can control, this book re shaped me into feeling capable of making any dream my own reality.
I often resonate with other creatives in the sense that we are most of the time, pretty head in the clouds kinds of people. There was no limitation on what I could or couldn’t draw, but there was a limitation on how I believed I could confidently own the way I walked in the world. This book changed that for me, and so I would encourage any other big dreamer, who may limit themselves on what they think they can accomplish, to read this book. I hope it helps the way it did for me.
What do you find most rewarding about being a creative?
The most rewarding aspect of being a creative is hearing people’s testimony on how my work has moved them in their own life. I used to think, “how could something I put out in the world resonate with someone else?” But it is in shared moments with other strangers that remind us we are human. It is in the moments of hearing other people’s most basic experiences and how they see them in my work that I know I have done a good service to this world. The shared feelings of loss and hope, of triumph and embarrassment, reclamation of power and hopelessness all at once, that we forget about the fact that every other human on earth shares those same exact experiences in a beautiful spectrum of colors and memories.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://Sofiamargaretart.com
- Instagram: @Sofiamargaretart & @weddingsbysofiamargaret
