Meet Leigh Witherell

Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Leigh Witherell. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Hi Leigh, thanks for sharing your insights with our community today. Part of your success, no doubt, is due to your work ethic and so we’d love if you could open up about where you got your work ethic from?

My work ethic is straight from my family. I watched my parents work hard every day and they struggled, but they still provided for me as a kid. I still got to play sports, had most of the toys that I wanted, I had food on the table everyday. Later on when my parents separated, it was just my mom who provided for me and my sister and she did it. She took help when she needed it from my grandmother and my aunt, but she worked very hard to become independent and my sister and I watched this and benefitted from it. As an adult, my circumstances have been very different from my parents, but my work ethic is still very much rooted in those past examples.

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 am fortunate enough to be able to focus on being an artist, it is my full time endeavor. I wake up thinking about what I have on the easel and I look forward to working on it every day. My art comes from the life happening around me, it is inspired by the conversations I am either involved in or that I pass on the street. We moved into Center City Philadelphia a month ago and it is the first time we have been living in a downtown area. It is exciting that we bought in a condo building that is 175 years old and we are painting it now and figuring out how to make a new smaller space work. My studio has always been in my home and I love that right outside the dramatically huge living room windows I can see and hear life happening, it’s inspirational. I am starting to offer commission work now and I am very excited to be working on one from my new studio.

There is so much advice out there about all the different skills and qualities folks need to develop in order to succeed in today’s highly competitive environment and often it can feel overwhelming. So, if we had to break it down to just the three that matter most, which three skills or qualities would you focus on?

If I have to narrow this to just 3 qualities I would choose diligence, tenacity, and listening. In the art world the artist must be diligent to improve. You always have to be working on your craft to gain new insight and new skills. Being tenacious is very valuable since there will be plenty of people telling you why it won’t work to be an artist and how you should focus on things are important. But I think the most valuable skill I possess is the ability to listen. I learned this skill by being raised in a family of story tellers and talkers. Listening (to me) is the ability to hear what isn’t being said and it is those moments that are my focus. Example: the newest commission I am doing is for a young woman who lost her father, a very important person in her life. I listened to the stories of happiness, I looked at the photos showing a smiling man, but I heard a deep sadness, a longing for her father to be able to see her life now. So that is my composition, it is her father sitting under a tree, looking proud of what life she is making. He isn’t the laughing smiling man from the photos, but rather the quiet loving proud man watching from the shadows.

What is the number one obstacle or challenge you are currently facing and what are you doing to try to resolve or overcome this challenge?

My number one obstacle right now is gaining a steady and reliable profit from my art career. Art sales are very tricky as they tend to be tethered to a buyers being in love with a certain piece. The problem is you can never know who is going to love what. So as the artist, I paint what I am inspired by, I put it out on social media, I enter exhibitions, I do interviews, and sometimes I will boost a post or run an ad and I hope for the best. It is the craziest business model out there and it is far from guaranteed income. I would like to really be able to advertise the commissions more, but it is difficult for people to understand that the final piece won’t look like the person, but rather it will show the emotion under that person. It’s rough!

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