We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Tori Bilas. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Tori below.
Hi Tori, thanks for joining us today. What did your parents do right and how has that impacted you in your life and career?
I may be biased, but it seems like my parents did everything right.
Career-wise, I grew up watching them both do what they loved, proving to my brother and me that we can – and should – follow our passions. My dad had said once, “Do what you love and the money will follow.” I have been watching him doing what he loves for many years now and he still hasn’t gotten tired of it. In fact, his response when people tell him he does a great job is, “It beats working for a living.” This attitude has made me realize I deserve to spend every day doing something I love, rather than something I feel like I have to do to earn a paycheck.
My mom’s influence was a little more directly applicable to learning the career path of an artist. She began painting regularly when we were young kids, and she’d set up paints on the dining room table when she had the time. I watched her balance a busy life with an art career, filling friends’ homes with her beautiful paintings and eventually signing with galleries and selling across the country. Her style has always been uniquely her own. She learns from other artists, but she has mastered her own artistic voice that is evident in every painting, through her use of color, brushstroke, and composition. She helped me learn how to work with oil paint back in high school, and she’s still the first one I turn to for a critique on a nearly-finished piece.
Together, my parents created a family environment that allowed my brother and me to succeed at the highest level without pressure. There was never a spoken expectation to be A+ students and go to Ivy League colleges, but the effort they put into our everyday lives made us simply want to put the effort right back in, so we could do our best and make them proud. The biggest expectation set by my parents was to simply be good people. Being nice and caring for others was more important than grades or scholarships, and that is something that has paid off in spades. Our innate desires to succeed got us where we were meant to be, but I now believe kindness is what gets you even higher, and it’s something I witness nearly every day with my parents in their personal and professional circles.
Arguably the most significant thing my parents did that influenced my career was filling my life with animals. I grew up with a cat, then we got our first puppy when I was seven, right around the time I started riding horses as well. I was an animal lover from the very start, so it was natural to need an animal in my house at all times, and adding in the joy of horses has taken that love for animals into a successful career, in both equestrian journalism and fine art pet portraiture. My parents always encouraged me to do what I love, and what I love happens to be my animals. Rather than being a vet, who has to bear the burden of the bad days with animals, I’ve found a path that lets me celebrate them and share their profound effect with other animal lovers. My mom was always going to have animals, being a pet lover herself, and my dad, who could live without them, recognized how special they were to the rest of us, so he’s come to love and appreciate them as well, feeding the dogs the occasional Moonpie and Slim Jim just to make them happy.
Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.
I have been creating since I was a very young child, doodling on anything I could get my hands on. Those doodles became more refined pieces of art as I grew older, and at age 13, I was commissioned to draw pictures of horses for a friend. As a part of the Charlotte, NC, equestrian community, I quickly realized this could be a good source of business, so I gave these horse portraits as gifts, also accepting more commissions. This business continued at a steady rate for years, and I’ve slowly grown and adapted with demand, including raising rates, developing a website and social media profiles, and very simple marketing strategies.
A good portion of my art education came from high school, where the art program allowed students a great deal of flexibility and creativity, mostly letting students choose the scope and direction of their own projects. Because of this, I could choose the subject matter and medium of every project, ultimately earning the highest honor in high school art, a Scholastic Gold Key for my final portfolio. I studied Visual Art at Duke University, learning a wide variety of skills I still use, including Adobe products, photography, and expanded my painting skills under a fabulous painting instructor.
Art then took a back seat as I went into the working world. I’ve still followed a passion, working in equestrian sports media, attending the nation’s biggest equestrian events and writing, photographing, and reporting on them. The jobs I’ve worked have required a lot of travel, taking me away from my easel, but the art business has continued to thrive, just with an added element of patience from many clients, who are almost always willing to wait as long as they need to for my work.
Now, in 2024, I now offer pencil, colored pencil, oil paintings, and watercolors as part of my offerings. Pets are still the vast majority of the work I do, but I have recently added in watercolor home portraits and I certainly won’t turn down a commission for a dozen doughnuts or a shiny candy bar. The common thread through my work is that I capture what people love. So many people love their dog more than anything (or horse, for those who are crazy enough to own one), but some are just not animal lovers, so I’ll draw or paint whatever truly sets their heart on fire. My work has made an incredible gift over the years, and I’ve painted for several high-profile clients including New York Giants quarterback Daniel Jones, South Carolina Women’s Basketball Coach Dawn Staley, Olympic Show Jumper Mclain Ward, and pretty much the entirety of Matthews Glen, the retirement community where my grandma lives and serves as my unofficial chief marketing officer.
The most important aspect I maintain in my art is that, since the majority is custom, commissioned work, it is something no one else will ever have. While my style doesn’t have a trademark look in the way many famous artists do, I keep a consistent style throughout all pieces, but make small adjustments when necessary to best honor my subject. A silky, glowing Golden Retriever may have a lighter use of paint than a scruffy Doodle mix, that may benefit from some chunky brushstrokes to really capture the texture. I let the subject influence the background, too, rather than picking something consistent for every piece. Above all, clients get top-of-the-line customer service with all thoughts and concerns heard. I’ve worked with so many people since age 13, and the response to my work has been overwhelmingly positive, even on days when I’m less than satisfied with my own work. My audience is a very gracious and appreciative one, and I think a lot of it stems back to the fact that I’m capturing what they love most.
Speaking of love, my next venture in the art world is custom wedding stationery, which will become an official offering likely by the fall. I plan to incorporate custom art into every fully-custom stationery design (provided the client is interested in that) and I hope to continue to add offerings in this space as I learn the business and continue to get creative with a new outlet.
Any resources you can share with us that might be helpful to other creatives?
I have just discovered the power of online courses this year, and I am soaking up so much valuable information. I’ve been learning through every platform, from free content on YouTube to paid 10-week courses, and I feel like I’m in a new world where I can learn and do everything. I loved school, and then I took a long break where I just worked very hard and didn’t make much room for continuing to learn at a high level, so currently I’m feeling like I’m back in school, and I hope my work shows what I’m learning as a result.
My favorite structure so far is when the course instructor brings on a guest expert in some area. In my 10-week course, we’ve covered areas that reach from personal branding to managing small business finances, and hearing from these experts, especially in a more laid-back Zoom environment, has been invaluable.
The other powerful thing that has come from many of these courses is the community platforms each one has. Some have built-in peer group aspects, and now I have a group text, a weekly call, and constant suggestions and recommendations from a small group that has gotten to know me well. Each one also has its own Facebook Group, which I’ve utilized for so many things, from small details questions to big-picture business development assistance.
Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?
In college, I had a mix of professors in the art department and got a wide range of feedback when it came to my art. My sophomore and junior year, I learned under Beverly McIver, a renowned artist based in North Carolina whose work is represented in museums and prestigious New York City galleries. She taught me so much and championed my work, boosting my confidence while also pushing me to explore.
Senior year, I had a different professor, one who also headed the art department. About to head out into the world, I wanted to take what I learned and apply it to the subjects I wanted to pursue: animals. This professor wasn’t particularly a fan of my work, and his messaging was something I’d heard before, which was that animals – dogs and horses precisely – are too “safe” to be captivating and thought-provoking art. I listened to this advice in high school, drawing and painting mostly humans in order to win awards, but I wasn’t easily convinced this time around. While I agreed that many museums feature art that puzzles most and thinks very far outside the box, that wasn’t really my personal goal. I had a somewhat thriving business throughout college and all I wanted to do was just keep getting better so I could improve my offering and take it to the next level. I was thinking from a business mindset, and I knew what was going to be best for me.
Each meeting with him led to more frustration as he critiqued my work and tried to steer me in other directions. I was pretty convinced I was the least talented artist in the (rather small) department by the way he spoke to me. He really was not impressed by the work I was doing, yet he was the one in charge of advising my final portfolio and grading me as well. My past professor, Beverly, was still supporting me, and she had said a big reason why he didn’t like my work was simply that he was a man, and animals just didn’t resonate with him. While that lifted me up enough to just keep on cruising to the finish line, I was even more discouraged when he told me I was nominated for a prominent award, the Sue and Lee Noel Prize for Visual Arts, that would be decided at graduation. He was the one who told me I was nominated, and in the same sentence he told me he didn’t think I would receive the award.
It was a rather disappointing final semester of art, but I finished the pieces I set out to create, and as the semester drew to a close, I won the award. I look back at this time with a rather difficult professor as something I probably needed as an artist, because in reality, not everyone is going to like you or your work. I’ve spent most of my life being praised and celebrated, and I often wonder if there was a great deal of purpose in the words he shared with me, giving me a taste of reality just in case no one ever had. Even if he didn’t intend a greater purpose, and he was just being mean, I still don’t look back at it as a completely negative experience. It required a good deal of belief in myself and where I was headed, because someone very prominent was questioning that. I stuck to my plan and ultimately it was the right decision.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://toribilasart.com
- Instagram: https://instagram.com/toribilas
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/toribilasart
- Linkedin: Victoria Bilas
Image Credits
Photo of me with horse: Terise Cole Photography
Stationery photo: Megan Sheppard Photography