We were lucky to catch up with Meg Stapp recently and have shared our conversation below.
Hi Meg, thank you so much for opening up with us about some important, but sometimes personal topics. One that really matters to us is overcoming Imposter Syndrome because we’ve seen how so many people are held back in life because of this and so we’d really appreciate hearing about how you overcame Imposter Syndrome.
I dealt with imposter syndrome from the moment I started my career in the arts. I didn’t attend a fancy art school, I didn’t take art classes, and I didn’t even take any classes growing up in the arts beyond what they taught in elementary schooling. Yet I knew I was always artistic and when I was wrapping up college I took up arts as a means of therapy and knew that somehow I was going to make a career out of it. With baby steps, I started learning graphic design to land my first job and I felt very lost doing it but there was still a small and relatively quiet voice that let me know I would one day be able to do this and do it well. The voice telling me I couldn’t was louder but I persisted. When I was confident in my graphic design abilities, I took more baby steps into learning UI/UX always choosing and listening to the voice letting me know I would be able to do this. From there I baby-stepped my way into learning hand lettering and illustration and gradually the voice letting me know I could do this became louder and started to drown out feeling like a fraud. The voice telling me I couldn’t was always pushed away by action, even the smallest actions would make my confidence grow and the imposter syndrome voice become smaller. Whatever it is you want to do will always feel hard until it doesn’t, and by doing- the only way you get out is through.
Great, so let’s take a few minutes and cover your story. What should folks know about you and what you do?
My name is Meg Stapp and I am an Illustrator, Lettering Artist, Muralist, and designer based out of Phoenix, Arizona. I have over 9 years of experience in my field and growing into the kind of artist I want to be every day. I have created a niche of interesting lettering combined with desert or botanical illustrations with a surrealist twist and fall deeper in love with my craft with every new project. I have created artwork for the Superbowl, Sky Harbor Airport, Hoka, and many other exciting clients. I am most recently excited about a new installation in the heart of Uptown Phoenix where you can find my illustrations wrapped all the way around a 4 story building!
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?
The patience to start as a beginner and the tenacity to know that with time and action, I will get to where I want to be.
Practice makes improvements, makes more practice makes more improvements. I never strive for perfection because I know that perfection is an unrealistic standard. I do however strive for practice because I know it will make all the more improvements.
To those starting out: Keep going. Keep pursuing what sets your soul afire, and keep taking actions (even super small) in the direction of your dreams. It will take lots of time investments and effort but I can assure you one day you’ll wake up and thank past you for having kept moving and learning.
If you knew you only had a decade of life left, how would you spend that decade?
This question really hits close to home as I have had a lot of death close to me as of late and I feel like I have recently reflected on how I spend my time in regards to how much of it I may or may not have left because of it. Personally, I feel like I have so much more to create- I feel like I have just scraped the surface with my artistic abilities and I really want to tap more into my creative potential. There’s more I want to say with my work and more I want to create just for creation’s sake rather than creation for clients’ needs. I have been focusing on this innate need to create this year and hoping that I can make more art that is a source of joy and fulfillment for myself. I have been reevaluating how I spend my time so that I can live in a better state of creative harmony. Beyond this, I would spend more time traveling and enhancing my perspective on the world and spend more time with the people who feel like home. Time is the most precious gift and I am realizing this with every passing day.
Contact Info:
- Website: stappstudios.com
- Instagram: stappstudios
