Here’s an uplifting reminder to all you aspiring creatives out there: it’s never too late. Case in point: illustrator and author Lisa Congdon. With more than 360k followers on Instagram, and a feature in the 2017 book, 200 Women Who Will Change the Way you See the World, Congdon is clearly a force to be reckoned with.
Which makes her creative journey all the more surprising. “My start was very non-traditional,” she admitted once in an interview with Creative Boom. “I was just a regular, non-artist person (at the time in my early thirties) and I took a couple of art classes for fun. That was about 18 years ago.”
With “zero intention” of becoming a professional artist — or even of being an artist at all — things took off, mainly thanks to the internet. “I was basically just bored at my job, and going through some big changes in my life after a breakup with my partner, and needed something positive to focus on,” she recalled. “So I started taking classes making art at my kitchen table.”
But after sharing her work online she found that what she perceived as a simple hobby, could actually be the start of a new chapter. “My mantra has always been, ‘Begin anyhow,’” she says. With clients that include Comme des Garçons, Crate and Barrel, Facebook, and MoMA – you’d want to take note.
