Today we’d like to introduce you to Madeleine Petti.
Hi Madeleine, can you start by introducing yourself? We’d love to learn more about how you got to where you are today.
MaddyMariePaints was honestly an accident, but the kind of accident that you try to avoid your entire life before finally realizing that it’s probably your destiny.
A lot of artists grew up constantly drawing, and that part of my story is no different. My mom remembers me sitting at my little green table in the living room with my twin sister, both of us drawing circles and circles and circles, trying to get the “perfect” shaped head. My parents are both architects, and when my sisters and I were little, my dad would bring home these giant copies of old blueprints for us to draw on the back with our crayons. When we got a little older, my parents began to share their old Prismacolor pencils from college with us. While my family struggled financially through the years due to the rollercoaster that is the architecture industry, my parents always made sure we had our art supplies stocked.
As a kid, I wanted to be a rock star, a shopping mall owner, or a prima ballerina. It wasn’t until meeting my great uncle, John Delulio, that I started to even consider a career involving art school. Uncle Jack was the coolest person I have ever met. He lived on Wildflower Ranch in Calvert, Texas, and was a character, to say the least. From what I understand, after leaving the military, he invested in what became FedEx Kinko’s and used that money to study art at Pratt. He became a commercial artist and is credited with starting the triangle movement in the 1980s. We’d visit his ranch once in a while and paint with him in his barn where he kept his most prized possessions: his paint brushes and his guns. I remember him always telling me to not listen to anyone else telling me what to do, because “it’s your art, kid.”
Throughout high school, my priorities shifted and I disengaged from developing my art. While I took AP art, it was more to just get an easy A (or so I thought), than carve out a path to an art career. The class ended up being super difficult as my aesthetics clashed with the art teacher’s idea of what was an appropriate AP art thesis. I wanted to do mixed-media self-portraits with paint and collages. She wanted me to stop using glitter.
Well, I stopped using glitter by quitting AP art entirely. It wasn’t a big deal as I had decided a long time ago that I didn’t want to ever be a professional artist because I wanted to be “normal” and have food on the table. I took my full-tuition scholarship at the University of Alabama to the psychology department. I carved out a path to becoming a therapist.
During my time at Alabama, I ended up doing a ton of design favors for my sorority, Delta Gamma, as well as winning the banner competition for Anchor Splash (our largest annual philanthropic event) both years that I participated as a coach. In May 2019, I created the @MaddyMariePaints Instagram account as a way to just post about the cute canvases I painted for the Big/Little reveal, these decorations I made for recruitment, or a 21st birthday sign I made for a friend. Essentially, I took commission requests for my little business and kept painting so I’d have artwork to decorate my apartment, but I was still dead set on becoming a therapist.
Well, I ended up not going to grad school after graduating (at least, not yet). I got an internship in marketing and social media management as a trial run to see if I’d like it, and it turned into a job! However, the company had to close its doors due to a lack of work and I spent from May until mid-July in a deep depression that was almost as bad as the depressive episodes that defined my high school experience.
One day in mid-July, I was very depressed and very unemployed and very bored and was just kind of doodling on my iPad when I had the idea to create a collection that was not a commission, but just my original artwork on items that people could purchase through my Etsy. I’d tried my hand at selling a few stickers but wasn’t met with any success as I hadn’t learned to properly calibrate my Cricut (the cuts were off).
After I calibrated my Cricut, I came up with the idea for a game day collection inspired by my time at the University of Alabama. I made the designs pink because everything needs pink in my world. I launched my collection on the first day of school because that just seemed like a good day, and I shipped off a copy of the collection to four of my besties that still went to school there, and told them to just wear the buttons and maybe post about it on social media.
Well, the Girls on Gameday collection blew up, and I registered MaddyMariePaints as an LLC. I’ve had a ton of fun running it so far, and I want to work up to having MaddyMariePaints as my full-time job. I’m launching a second collection, a holiday one, of greeting cards, ornaments, coasters, and mini canvases on October 19th. I’ve just kind of fallen into being an artist, but it’s actually become the love of my life, weirdly enough.
We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
I’m still very, very new at running an art business, so it’s hard to judge the smoothness of the journey right now. I need health insurance and money for retirement because a girl needs to survive long-term, and I currently am not able to live off just my art business alone.
My biggest dream is to sell my artwork and gifts in local boutiques, and I have started that process with a boutique, which is so cool. One of my biggest goals is to run MaddyMariePaints full-time, but I don’t know when I’m going to get there. It could be in a few years, but more likely, it will take many, many years.
Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your work?
I paint a lot of flowers, portraits, animals, and land/seascapes! Right now, my following knows me for my gameday collection, but I’m planning to expand into a wide variety of collections, all featuring my original artwork.
What sets my art apart from others is the sheer amount of pink I use. If it can be made pink, I will make it pink. That is a promise. It’s no longer the Midas touch. It’s the MaddyMariePaints touch, and I’ll turn it pink for you.
Do you have recommendations for books, apps, blogs, etc?
I’ve been listening to the Create! Magazine podcast, and The Artistic Entrepreneur podcast, both on Spotify. I like to casually listen to them when I pack orders. I spend a lot of time watching videos from other artists on Youtube about how they run their businesses, and I’ve learned quite a bit from ImAWonder and ErgoJosh.
I consider myself a commercial artist like my Uncle Jack was, versus a fine artist, but I try to get advice from a wide variety of creatives. I’m diversifying my advice portfolio, y’all. Mostly, I get my advice from my family and friends. They’re my best resource because they know me and my journey, and they can actually personalize the advice to my needs.
I also want to take this time to credit Taylor Swift for creating her Folklore and Evermore albums. Those songs are amazing painting songs.
Pricing:
- Digital Art Commissions $65.00+
- Canvas Commissions $250.00+
- See MaddyMariePaints on Etsy for non-commission art pricing!
Contact Info:
- Website: www.maddymariepaints.com
- Instagram: www.instagram.com/maddymariepaints
- Facebook: www.facebook.com/maddymariepaints/
- Other: www.maddymariepaints.etsy.com
Image Credits
MaddyMariePaints
