Today we’d like to introduce you to Amelia Harju.
Amelia, we appreciate you taking the time to share your story with us today. Where does your story begin?
I first dipped my toes into the art world with photography. I grew up in Duluth, which has an incredibly rich music scene, and as a teenager, I spent a lot of time taking promos and live photos for my friends’ bands. I took my camera everywhere I went, so I also took a lot of photos of nature, animals, and basically whatever my friends and I were up to on any given day. Sometime during college, I stopped taking photos and it wasn’t until after college that I started diving into other artforms—primarily drawing, painting, and wood carving.
Even though the medium of my art has changed and I haven’t lived in Duluth for over ten years, I continue making art that is inspired by the landscapes, waterscapes, flora, and fauna from my childhood and adolescenthood. I still feel an intense nostalgia for that time in my life, and through art I feel like I am able to carry a part of “home” with me everywhere I go, regardless of where I am geographically.
I’m sure you wouldn’t say it’s been obstacle free, but so far would you say the journey has been a fairly smooth road?
It hasn’t always been a smooth road. My three main struggles have been time, motivation, and insecurity. Making art is a hobby for me, not a job, so it can be difficult to find the time and energy to create when I’m also balancing a full-time job and all of life’s other obligations and responsibilities. The longer I go without making art, the harder it is for me to summon the motivation to start again, and sometimes I go a full year or more without creating anything. However, one of my favorite times of the year is between Christmas and New Year’s, because I usually take that full week off from work and just focus on making art. It’s a great way for me to reset, especially if I’ve been in a rut.
The other major struggle I deal with is feeling insecure about whether my art is “good enough” (for who? I don’t know). I used to obsessively keep track of how much money I was spending on art supplies, compared to how much money I was making from selling art. I would use this as an “objective” measure of my own validity as an artist. Obviously, this was not a healthy approach and it often left me feeling disheartened when I went through stretches where I wasn’t selling much art… which is most of the time.
Surprisingly, I would feel equally horrible when things were going really well and I was selling a lot of art. Putting this huge emphasis on the financial aspect of my art drained my creativity and seeped the joy out of creating. I found myself thinking along the lines of, “What can I make that will take the least amount of time and energy, but will still be likely to sell?” rather than creating art that I was actually inspired by and driven to make. This also stunted my creativity because I was less inclined to try something new, for fear of messing up and “wasting my time”.
When things were going well financially, that also usually meant I had a lot of commissions, which I’ve learned I often don’t enjoy doing. When commissions don’t happen to align with my style and the subject matter I’m inspired by, they tend to deplete my sense of creativity and turn making art into an obligation rather than a pleasure. It’s usually not fun for me to try to bring other people’s ideas to life when I barely have enough time and energy to bring my own ideas to life.
Through all of these struggles, the most important lesson I’ve learned is to have low expectations and to detach my sense of self-worth as an artist from how much money my art is making or how many followers I have on social media. I create my best work when I’m making art for myself rather than seeking validation from others in the form of “likes” or in the number of products I sell. Making art for myself also encourages me to try new techniques, push myself, and explore whatever is inspiring me at the moment.
Thanks – so what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?
I primarily make pen and ink drawings, pointillism paintings, and wood carvings. As I mentioned earlier, the biggest inspiration for the content of my work is the landscapes, waterscapes, flora, and fauna of northern Minnesota. However, the biggest inspiration for the style of drawings that I make is Edward Gorey. I love how his work evokes conflicting feelings and requires the viewer to come to their own conclusions about what the piece is about. When art is ambiguous and has multiple interpretations, it makes the piece feel more interactive between the artist and the viewer. My style is definitely distinct from Edward Gorey’s, but my work does echo his use of crosshatching and repetitive patterns, and some of my work similarly merges the whimsical with the macabre or melancholy.
The painting style I enjoy most is pointillism. Like many people, I was first introduced to pointillism through Georges Seurat’s painting titled, A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte. While not pointillism, I am similarly intrigued by Chuck Close’s portraits that use a conglomerate of abstract shapes that somehow come together to create a lifelike image when viewed at a distance. These styles fascinate me because they force the artist to approach painting in an entirely different way and to think about how color and images are perceived by the human eye and brain. For some reason, it’s easier for me to understand color through this sort of pixel-by-pixel process rather than looking at the larger picture. I also have obsessive-compulsive disorder, so I enjoy that pointillism allows me to have control over every millimeter of the canvas in a way that traditional painting styles don’t. There’s just something about pointillism that really clicks with my brain on multiple levels.
The art that sets me apart from others the most is probably my wood carvings. I started making wood carvings over 6 years ago after being inspired by an artist named Robbie Jones. My basic process is buying a slab of soft wood (such as basswood), painting it black, and then carving a design into it using v- and u-shaped gouges. I started out with really simple designs and my first 6 carvings were of different sleeping animals, as an ode to sleep and its abundance of restorative capacities on all creatures, large and small. Gradually my wood carvings have gotten more detailed over time (and with better, sharper tools), but the nostalgic themes of northern Minnesota and yearning for a place to call “home” remain constant. The wood carving I’m currently working on is especially close to home, because it depicts a Boundary Waters-esque scene and is for my brother, who makes trips there at least a couple times per year. My brother and I are completely different in so many ways, but one thing that ties us together is our infatuation with northern Minnesota’s natural spaces. He’s the only family member of mine who still lives in Duluth.
In terms of your work and the industry, what are some of the changes you are expecting to see over the next five to ten years?
One thing I’ve noticed over the years is that, as with many other types of products, there has been a shift toward people buying more affordable and mass-produced art rather than buying art from artists. However, art is an interesting industry because it rarely pays well, and yet there will always, always be an abundance of people who are creating art. That is somehow simultaneously depressing and comforting, because it speaks to our society’s devaluation of art and creativity, while it also speaks to the extraordinarily resilient and adaptable nature of artists. I also find it encouraging that there are still plenty of cities and communities that put a lot of effort into supporting local artists by cultivating a healthy and thriving art scene, including Duluth and my current home in Portland, Oregon.
Pricing:
- Prints of my drawings are available for $20
- My small pointillism paintings range from $35 to $70
- My wood carvings range from $95 to $125
Contact Info:
- Website: www.etsy.com/shop/AmeliaHarju
- Instagram: www.instagram.com/ameliaharju
