Melissa Doty never considered herself as an artist until a few years ago. Balancing life as a full time mother and a legal assistant, there was never a clear path towards making a career out of her artistry. Life tended to incline her towards various creative projects until she suddenly began to go from dabilling to fully pursuing art as her passion. Melissa delves into the truths of pursuing a career in art from financial hardships to the blissful of moments of inspiration. She also offers insightful advice for anyone looks to pursue a career in the arts.
JM: How did your art career really start to unfold as an adult?
MD: Every once and awhile I’d start to invest my time into art but I wasn’t immediately perfect at it, so I’d quit after a week. I’m typically pretty good at whatever I attempt so being flat-out BAD at something was very uncomfortable for me. I like to know what I’m doing, and with art – I didn’t know anything. Once I started drawing and had made some artsy and supportive friends on Instagram, I learned about art challenges. I decided to participate in a yearly challenge called Inktober – basically a guy started it a few years ago, and now it’s the biggest art challenge on social media. You upload your art and tag it, and become part of this huge thing there are 12.5 million posts right now on Instagram tagged with #inktober. The resources available online are also staggering. I’ve taught myself how to frame, how to shoot, and how to edit instructional videos. I also started to experiment with watercolor landscapes, and folks seemed to really like them. I learned how to mat and package paintings. I sold over a hundred of them over the course of a few months. It was exhilarating and bizarre and terrifying all at once. I started getting commission requests, and it was then that I realized I had the opportunity to truly reinvent myself at age 46. I mean, what did I have to lose?
Courtesy of Melissa Doty
JM: How did you go from completing smaller works to defining your brand as an artist? MD: I took an “Instagram for Artists” class from a popular artist named Amira Rahim, and learned a lot about how to use Instagram specifically as an artist. I I think when I started the class I had 300 followers, and now I’m at 11.6k. I have friends with 100k followers who are killing it but they are also on there 24/7, and that’s not appealing to me. It’s exhausting, hundreds of DMs daily for those larger accounts. People want to see everything – the behind the scenes, the finished product, and they will give you feedback whether you want it or not. You have to fight the tendency to just post work that you know will get a lot of likes. For example, when I do a “tiny squares” video, it usually performs really well and helps my “numbers” and visibility. But that’s not what I want to paint all the time, even though “followers like consistency”. I get bored with consistency!
JM: How did you get commissioned to paint a mural for the city?
MD: I find I do my best work when I’m not trying to manage my expectations, or just playing around. My whole last floral series came out of a moment of frustration when I couldn’t paint flowers like I thought I should be painting them, so I just made a crazy messy floral instead and got great response on that style. That relates to how the mural came about: Our city’s public arts director had put out a request for artwork just to see what kinds of artwork folks in the community were doing. I was inexperienced with acrylic paint. I had barely been painting for two years. So I pulled an all-nighter painting a concept piece JUST FOR FUN and submitted the proposal right before the deadline. There was no fear, because in my mind there was just no chance for success. Two months later, the committee met and chose their 6 favorites from maybe 40 artists. I was honestly stunned to be chosen. I’m really proud of that mural, and it has definitely led to other opportunities.
JM: Where do you see your passion taking you?
MD: I’d love to refine my work and learn how to license it for products, patterns, etc. I’m currently learning how to use Photoshop to digitize my work and prepare it for print and other formats. I’d also love to see my work on wallpaper, fabric, clothing, etc. and to keep working toward larger pieces and maybe travel the world doing murals.
JM: What advice would you give college students struggling choosing between following them passion and pressure to find job security?
MD: In all seriousness, feeding your passion is important. As is having money to actually be able to feed yourself. I really think in this day and age, there is so much opportunity for a side hustle that it’s possible to have a day job and pursue a passion in off hours. I think it’s about balance and what you are willing to sacrifice. You can’t have the mental freedom to explore your passion if you can’t make rent. You might not be able to live your dream life right now, but that doesn’t mean you can’t start laying the foundation and taking baby steps to make dreams happen. Don’t wait until you can “afford to” follow your passion, because life just completely takes over and you’ll never get around to it. Know that whatever your passion is, it’s going to be “work”. If you decide to follow it and try to make a living out of it and at times, there will be little fun or passion involved. There is this misconception that artists just sit down and paint a masterpiece. That might happen sometimes, but most artists produce a ton of material, and only a little bit sees the light of day. It can be tedious the running of the business, the taxes, the invoices, the product photography, the web maintenance, the social media stuff, the email lists, the digital work, etc. and it’s around the clock. But then there will be moments where you look at your life, and are like “PEOPLE PAY ME TO DO THIS??” and it’s wonderful.
Melissa Doty is living proof that you can pursue your passion, whatever it may be.