Today we’d like to introduce you to Megan Johnson.
Megan, we appreciate you taking the time to share your story with us today. Where does your story begin?
I have enjoyed creating art my whole life, but let it fall into the background during college. I started painting again a little here and thereafter I was married but became more serious about it after my husband bought the largest canvas Michael’s had (about 4′ x 5′) and asked me to paint him a lion. I had never painted animals before, or anything that large, so to say I was intimated would be an understatement. So much so, that it took me a few years to even start. I had decided to paint it in the greyscale to keep it neutral and leave the background white; I liked the minimalistic look. The face took the longest; there were hundreds (maybe thousands?) of itty-bitty strokes to create the texture of the short fur. When I completed The Lion. I was surprised at how happy I was with it.
After great feedback, my husband and I made a deal. If I completed a set of ten animals in the same style as the lion, we would look into getting prints of my work and making this into a business. In that next year, one of my friends commissioned me to paint a quirky ostrich in which Olivia the Ostrich (one of my most popular pieces) was born, and I found my whimsical side of painting. My husband kept encouraging me to continue painting and see where this could lead. Later that summer I attended my first art fair as a vendor where I remember tearing up, realizing and believing for the first time that this could actually work- being an artist could be my legitimate job.
Fast forward to today, this is my fulltime job. I mainly sell my artwork at art fairs, but also have started a website and an Etsy shop online.
We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
There has been a wide range of challenges thus far, in many areas of starting an art business. One in which I’d assume many artists struggle with, self-doubt and wondering if your work is good enough. It doesn’t seem to matter how many compliments and sales you get; self-doubt somehow always finds a way back in when I don’t get accepted to a certain event, or sales are down, or even when comparing your work to another artist. Another challenge has been finding quality and consistent prints. My dream would be to print my own reproductions one day, but that’s currently not in the cards for us. Meanwhile, the first company I used for printing had quality prints, but the coloring was never consistent and would sometimes look very different from my originals. As I became more serious about my job, I decided I needed to find someone who would be consistent, along with good quality. Thankfully, I found someone, and they’re even local! So that’s a win!
Another huge challenge that I’m still feeling repercussions from is that I hadn’t started full-time till 2019, the year before Covid changed everything. 2020 was going to be my first full year with having some experience and big plans. I had finished 2019 strong and was ready to hit the ground running for art fair season in 2020. And then everything was canceled (save for two). It was so frustrating, and really took the wind out of my motivation. We ended up buying a house, getting a puppy, and getting pregnant all in that year, so my focus turned to all of those things rather than working on my online presence, or painting many pieces. All in all, I currently feel like I’m playing catch up from where I left off in 2019, and figuring out what this business looks like with a baby at home.
Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
In a nutshell, I paint animals! I really love making my work something unexcepted and unique-one way I do this is through my coloring. Up until recently, all of my animals have been in the grayscale. I use black and white acrylic paint and blend those two colors together as I go to get all of my different shades of gray. However, a few of my pieces have pops of color in them. Recently I’ve been thirsting to use more color, but not normal colors. I still wanted to keep my work unexpected, so I decided to paint a monochromatic peacock.
Not in blue or green, but in different shades of peach! And I LOVED how it turned out. I’m currently working on a hippo that is also not in the gray scale-if you want to see which color it is, you’ll have to check out my social media for its announcement! Even more so than coloring, I’d say I’m most known for how quirky and happy most of my animals are.
My tag line to Reflections by Megan is Art That Makes You Smile. After painting Olivia the Ostrich and seeing how people immediately reacted to her sweet smile and fluffy feathers, I knew I needed to make more pieces with that same whimsical feeling. People started requesting I make a nursery collection, so I did! And it’s filled with cute little baby animals that have little smirks and smiles on their faces that have made countless people smile, and even giggle. One of the best compliments I have ever received was that my art inspires joy. And that’s my goal in each of my paintings. Whether it be through a cute expression, or a beautifully unique piece like the Peacock-I want to inspire joy.
Other than making people smile, I am really proud of all that I’ve learned, and all of the detail I put into my animals. I am a self-taught artist and love the challenge of making something as realistic as I can (while keeping it whimsical – I know – it’s a weird balance). Figuring out how to make a specific texture and details can be really challenging, but so worth it once I figure it out.
Any big plans?
My husband actually just recently joined me in doing this full-time! So the plans are to do as many art fairs as we can around here from spring-fall, and maybe do some traveling for southern art fairs during the winter months, which is new for us. We are also in the middle of making my artwork into stickers-which we’re pretty excited about! A future goal of mine (hoping by sometime next year) is to make an animal alphabet book with my paintings that contains facts about each animal, and of course, fun artwork. Other than that, we are continuing to work on our online presence with our current focus on our Etsy shop.
Pricing:
- Greeting Cards $6
- 8x10s $25
- 12×12/16/18 $50
- 16×20 $60
Contact Info:
- Email: reflections.megan@gmail.com
- Website: www.reflections-by-megan.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/reflections.megan/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Reflections.Megan
- Other: https://www.etsy.com/shop/ReflectionsByMeganMN?ref=shop_sugg
Image Credits
Hope Luskey Photography
