Meet Ariel Rainville

We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Ariel Rainville a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Ariel, appreciate you sitting with us today to share your wisdom with our readers. So, let’s start with resilience – where do you get your resilience from?

I get my resilience primarily from growing up around strong hardworking parents, along with overcoming my own obstacles and finding my own resilience which comes with age and life experiences.

Thanks, so before we move on maybe you can share a bit more about yourself?

I’m a native of San Francisco, received a Bachelor of Arts Degree in Theater from The University of California; Santa Cruz & found my love of art, specifically acrylic painting, while attending UCSC. Like many of you, I have my own influence; my Mother & her vibrant fashion, and my Father and his love of shoes. As a kid, my mother worked for fashion designers Jeanne Marc (Jeanne Allen & Marc Grant) in San Francisco. I spent my 20’s finding my passion for fashion and design as a hobby while working full time, primarily at the SF design center. I always loved finding creative ways to spend free time. I would sew my own handbags out of furniture fabric because I was able to take home discontinued fabric swatches. I owned a sketch book which was my diary.

Although art and design have always been a passion, I never pursued a career in art as a young adult, but instead decided to stick with numbers and follow that career path. Now 45, older and wiser, and a Mother of two; Ava (9) and Jackson (6), I want to inspire my kids to always follow their passion because I’ve learned to get passed feeling bad about starting this later in life, I try to mute the distractions as much as I can, and believe in myself. I like to include my kids in art when I can. Every Saturday I post a weekly doodle “Make Something Out of Nothing”; which I create with my children sometimes in my sketchbook, but primarily on my iPad using the art application Procreate. I explain that week’s influence, usually a Saturday morning film with the kids, and post the time lapse of the doodle every Sunday. I post this weekly series on my professional Instagram account @abstractartmom, which then posts to my personal IG & Facebook accounts for friends and family. I take daily pictures of a highlighted original painting turned graphic, or any new piece, and try to post a cool original music video to show off my love of fashion, art and music. It really is what I love. For the past 3-4 years, I’ve been doing all of my own photography, production, and creative twists to my page. Many can’t pin point one algorithm to explain my page, and I notice my following change constantly because I love to feel sexy, in a classy way using my own designs, I like to draw vintage designs like classic cars and anything fashion related, I love to draw shoes, I’m a mother, and on Saturday’s I choose to draw like a child because why not feel like a child sometimes. I love it. I was working full time until this past January when my Dad passed away. It’s been a very tough year, but my resilience has helped, and I do feel like the time I have now to try and work on making what I love a career.

My Father owned a shoe store, Galletti Brothers, in North Beach, the Italian district of San Francisco, throughout my childhood. He sold Birkenstocks on Columbus Avenue. He had style, he loved all music. I met some pretty cool people and went to some amazing shows with my Dad. He introduced me to rhythm and blues, soul, jazz, and was one of the smartest men I knew. I miss him every day.

Although I don’t paint as much anymore, I have started working on acrylic painting because Acrylic Painting is another key to my history and why graphic and digital design has become so important to me. My love of acrylic painting was not lost. I absolutely loved giving my paintings away as gifts to my close friends on any special occasion. Thankfully, my husband, kids, and friends saved my old hand made gifts and took pictures of each piece for me, so that I could bring them back to life digitally, along with new designs, to show to the world. I found that I could reinvent old designs from pictures. I’ve brought back a few series from pieces I painted 10-20 years ago. And this is how “abstractartmom” began. This creative outlet has unleashed a digital design passion that I never knew I had.

I sell my designs on AbstractArtMom.com. I’m working on updating my website, and I’ve recently added wrapping paper for the Holidays. I’ve included pictures of some of my staple graphics. I pay for my domain through Pattern, which is also connected to Etsy. Now that I have a little more time, I’m trying to save money by making more from Home, but I use a third party and pay the production cost for the designs I sell on my website. I upload my design and choose placement on my products, and Printify is used for production. My totes are definitely my best product.

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?

1) Art – being creative is in my blood

2) Fashion – I grew up with fashion, I love simple designs with pops of color. Color is the biggest part of who I am. I love all color which translates in everything I do.

3) I use my gut. A major quality and skill I have is my age. I was a naive youth (Gen X) growing up without the internet, who did not know or believe in how much talent I had. Growing and learning through life is so important when understanding yourself, and not letting people dictate what or who they think you are. Using art to express something important is the absolute perfect way to solve a problem, and possibly end a war.

One of our goals is to help like-minded folks with similar goals connect and so before we go we want to ask if you are looking to partner or collab with others – and if so, what would make the ideal collaborator or partner?

I’m always looking to collaborate. Now that I’m doing better after a difficult year, I need to push myself outside of my box, and work with the wonderful Boston art community I have met through social media, and hopefully be able to collaborate within my own small community in New Bedford. Anyone who has an interest in my fashion, my art, my daily musical mixes, I am willing to collaborate with. I always love when people ask me to draw a graphic for them. I know it’s a passion because it’s something I could do all day everyday. I had a non creative office job the past 5 years, and needing art in my life, I had to get my creativity out in some way, which became @abstractartmom. Now I have more time to collaborate, because I decided that I needed to move on from office work, take this time to focus on my kids, my health, and my art this year,

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.abstractartmom.com
• Instagram: @abstractartmom
• Facebook: Ariel Rainville (personal)
• Linkedin: Ariel Rainville
• Other: I sang the San Francisco Girls Chorus for 8 years. We were on a few albums. Performed for many people, toured the world. Another influence and key to who I am.

Image Credits

Ariel Rainville (all day / everyday)