We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Marisa Leilani Mustard a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Marisa Leilani, looking forward to learning from your journey. You’ve got an amazing story and before we dive into that, let’s start with an important building block. Where do you get your work ethic from?
I have had such amazing role models, My aunt and uncle are both artists (welder and graphic designer) and I see how hard they work every day and how happy and successful they are. Not only that but I throughly just enjoy painting. Even when I take a day off you can still find me painting or doing some type of art project. I’ve never been a person that can just sit still.
Appreciate the insights and wisdom. Before we dig deeper and ask you about the skills that matter and more, maybe you can tell our readers about yourself?
I mostly paint murals and functional art. I love creating art that people will use in their everyday lives, taking something that’s normally bland or generic (such as walls, mailboxes, light switch covers, guitars, etc) and adding a kind of flare to them.
I have been painting full time for 4 years now. I do about 1-3 murals a month and travel throughout the southeast.
Looking back, what do you think were the three qualities, skills, or areas of knowledge that were most impactful in your journey? What advice do you have for folks who are early in their journey in terms of how they can best develop or improve on these?
I would say three of the most important skills that I’ve learned are Communication Self control
Time management.
These are three separate skills but they are very much intertwined with each other. Sadly I don’t think there’s much advice I can give on this topic, I feel like experience is the best way to learn these.
However, one piece of advice I do have is that sometimes you’ll have deadlines to meet and you won’t feel creative and that’s a hard feeling. Whenever that happens to me I go do something that makes me happy & completely takes my mind off everything (usually walking in a creek and finding pottery) a break from everything really helps.
Any advice for folks feeling overwhelmed?
I have a really hard time taking a break. Even when I say I’m going to take days off I never do so whenever I’m feeling completely overwhelmed I drive somewhere (usually to the beach) and don’t bring any art supplies. I just take a few days, find fossils, take the canoe out and enjoy nature. When I get back I always feel 100% better.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.mleilaniart.bigcartel.com
- Instagram: @m.leilaniart
