We were lucky to catch up with Tajae Keith recently and have shared our conversation below.

Tajae, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today I’m sure there have been days where the challenges of being an artist or creative force you to think about what it would be like to just have a regular job. When’s the last time you felt that way? Did you have any insights from the experience?

I was happy for a long time, I think, before a lot of different losses and blows to my creative ego made my inner-artist retreat into themselves. I think a lot our personal lives as humans affect our work – creative or not – but this effect can be especially disruptive or inspiring in creatives.

I was disrupted by a lot of things, being burnt out and forced to overwork myself just to get by, the ongoing fight with covid, etc. I like to think that as I’ve been in recovery, I’m getting better and more aligned with my creative wants and needs every day but sometimes it’s hard to say in all the chaos though.

I’ve almost always had a regular 9-5 job alongside my creative jobs aside from the few years I spent as a fulltime freelancer. The white collar stuck at a desk all day vibe definitely isn’t for me either, but I’m holding onto hope that there’s some kind of middle ground between that and the purgatory that is fulltime freelancing.

Ultimately in a perfect world I’d be able to be sponsored by someone wealthier than me, so I wouldn’t’ve have to worry about feeding and housing. I’d be able to create what I want for the sake of making art and not for survival. In a perfect world I just think we’d give more to our creatives for all that they give to us.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

I’m Tajae Keith. A painter, character designer, and literary artist based in Oakland, CA. I’m currently represented under Einstein Literary Management. I enjoy creating work focused on the intersections of queerness and Blackness.

(I like to call this the “back of the box” introduction of myself and what I do as a creator haha)

I wish I had an epic story about some divine thing that brought me to art, but I don’t. I just got really into YouTube’s community of artists, it was the first time I’d become familiar with the concept of being an artist as a career path outside of the old greats we dedicate our museums to. And from there it just became an obsession, it was like the only thing I wanted to do anymore, it completely took over a lot of other hobbies and career dreams at the time (RIP to veterinarian Tajae).

I just begged my mom to let me try out art class in middle school instead of going into band to continue to practice the violin (I’d been playing for four years at that point so this was seemingly out of nowhere to my mom). She agreed to let me try it out for a semester and I was just focused on proving to her that it was worth my time as a skill to invest in. Come the semester’s end she could tell how much I liked making art and how seriously I was taking it. I just kept on from there and through a lot of trial and error things just sort of kept falling into place.

My very first real client was the physical trainer of an old friend from high school who wanted me on board of her athleisure wear brand. Although it’s not something aligned with my creativity or career ambitions at this point in time, I still hold the experience very close to my heart. She was the first person to pay and respect my work as an artist, I’m very grateful for what it opened me up to.

Now I’d say my first industry job, outside of freelancing on Twitter with individual clients, was a contracted character design gig back in 2021 with Warner Bros for character development work on Velma. At this point I’d dropped out of art school and was tentatively attending community college after moving back in with my mom, I was working on a refurbished older-gen iPad (it was a gift to myself so I could upgrade from the worn-down pen tablet I’d been using for years prior ), with a cheap tablet holder I got from amazon, sitting at our cheap kitchen table hunched over working all through the night. I was shocked to have had all my late nights and all my nonstop networking finally pay off in such a satisfying way. It was a dream job at my dream studio on my dream property.

I emphasize that a lot of what got me where I am and is guiding me where I’m going – was not money. I didn’t have much in the way of money, and while I’m sure that kept a lot of doors closed to me, it didn’t stop me from carving out bits and pieces of my own path wherever I could.

It’s still really early in my career, and I’m still so young so I’m honestly still figuring a lot of things about this whole art business, but I’m excited for whats coming next!

We’d love to hear your thoughts on NFTs. (Note: this is for education/entertainment purposes only, readers should not construe this as advice)

I think NFTs are an incredibly unfunny joke about the relationship between an artist and their art. It was a fleeting pyramid scheme that had a largely negative impact on the environment for the sake of a quick buck.

It’s hijacked the conversation about AI tools for artists and how they can assist our workflow to lessen the physical toll it takes on us, and turned it into a conversation about automation. NFTs wanted the aesthetic of an artist without any of the actual work.

Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?

I was freelancing fulltime up until about a year or so ago, I took on contracted work and curated a base of clients for my commission work. Through this, I spent years just barely scraping by on rent, bills, and necessities (like food). Sometimes I worked a day-job to help get by which meant I was pulling 8hr+ shifts in the day time and working late into the night on projects for clients. It felt like if I wasn’t officially doing work, I still ended up working, whether that be on my portfolio, streaming, trying to secure more clients, etc.

After a really bad work trip while tabling at New York Comic Con (I lost a lot of money haha), I was completely and utterly burnt out. I was mentally and physically tapped out, I spent a whole month crying and stressing about what my next move was and how I was going to figure out a way to pay my rent. I was no longer drawing for fun, I struggled to draw for work (constantly missing deadlines), I even put my graphic novel on hold because I just couldn’t keep up with the creative output needed from me anymore.

I knew something had to change but I didn’t know where to start, I got a gig at a small timeshare property for a few months through a good friend of mine. Soon after I applied for jobs at larger hotel properties, also on front desk, and got a good job with the best pay I’ve ever had, and get this, I have health insurance too! I’ve been at that job since, going on ten months now, and it’s helped me out as an artist considerably. I was able to take some time away from my professional work and reevaluate my goals and aspirations as an artist. I can’t say that I’m completely recovered from my burnout, but I’m doing better and better everyday.

Contact Info:

• Website:likasuart.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/blaque_rainbow/?hl=en