Lisa Congdon is a Self-Made Artist Through and Through

By
Ben
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With more than 350k followers on Instagram, illustrator and author Lisa Congdon is known (and clearly celebrated) for her colorful and graphic style of illustration and hand lettering.

Based in Portland, Oregon, her selected clients include Comme des Garçons, Crate and Barrel, Facebook, MoMA, REI, and Harvard University among many others. The author of eight books, she was named one of 40 Women Over 40 to Watch in 2015 and she is featured in the 2017 book, 200 Women Who Will Change the Way you See the World.

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✨✌🏼🌿⚡️🌈 FIFTY TWO YEARS ALIVE⛈💦🌪🌞Two birthday things! FIRST: As some of you know, this year I am riding my bike 3500 miles 🚴🏼‍♂️ to raise money for @fwdtogether an organization who works to protect, advocate for and empower some of the most vulnerable people among us. I can’t say enough about the amazing work they do. Since January 1, I’ve logged 103 miles on my bike (see my stories for a screenshot of my stats) and as of writing this post, raised $1210. My goal for my birthday (by the end of today) is to bring my fundraising total to $2000. If you’d like to help me do that, there’s a link to my fundraising page in my profile (and there you can read more about Forward Together and the work they do). Every penny counts, and even $5 helps! I’m offering gifts and personalized thank you notes and other surprises for every donation over $30! SECOND: Good news regarding Wednesday’s breast cancer update: my test results came back and I won’t be having a mastectomy, which means lumpectomy and five weeks of radiation instead, which also means 1) quicker recovery, 2) I get to keep my boobs for now and 3) more time on the bike this Spring. Thank you, universe. 🙏🏼 And thanks to all of you for being amazing. Let’s do this, 52! ✌🏼🚴🏼‍♂️⛈🔥🌪💦🌈❤️ (link to cycling challenge fundraising page in my profile —>❤️)

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With all that going on for her, her career path is a surprising one, having come to illustration quite late in the game. “My start was very non-traditional,” she relayed 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.”

According Congdon, she had “zero intention” of becoming a professional artist – or even of being an artist at all. “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. So I started taking classes making art at my kitchen table.”

She painted, drew, and made collages. And then, the internet happened. After sharing her work online, a small buzz was created and she decided to take her creative hobby more seriously. Little did she know that this was the beginning of a highly successful career. “My mantra has always been, ‘Begin anyhow,’ and that’s because there is always a reason we can think of why we can’t do something, or why we’ll fail,” she notes. “There is never a perfect time to do anything. So it’s important to just begin, even when you aren’t quite ready. And I did.”

Follow her inspiring creative journey through Instagram:

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True story: when I was first starting out as a working artist, I felt really overwhelmed with how much work was ahead of me and how far I had to go. I would lay in bed and fantasize about the day in the future in which I would finally have everything figured out: I’d be super organized, have ample opportunities, have a command of my technical skills, get to be choosy about my work, make good money, pay someone to work for me, etc, etc. and then FINALLY I would be able to relax & I’d have a perfect, carefree life. But guess what? Eventually all those things became true for me, and a whole new set of challenges arose — in my business and, consequently, in my life in general. You never “arrive” at some place in the future where everything is easy. Life doesn’t work that way. Sure, some things might get easiER with age & life experience (thank god), but there will always be a new struggle. Success doesn’t necessarily bring ease. Neither do relationships or Instagram followers or being a certain pant size. Mostly those things bring more work. The good news is that the work of leaning into and learning from your struggles is where real self acceptance & peace come from. If I have arrived at all it’s in a place of accepting I will never arrive. And that, my friends, is perfectly okay. Have a good Tuesday.

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On New Year’s Day I was writing in my notebook all the categories of things I want to work on in 2020. The thing that came up more often than anything else in the context of literally every category of my life was EASE. As I shared with Clay what I’d written, I explained that while nearly everything I’ve accomplished in the last ten years has been really wonderful, nearly all of it came with some amount of struggle: early mornings, tight schedules, rushing, stress, cramming, full days, some late nights. Struggle isn’t inherently bad. Discipline and focus taught me so much and helped me build a career that has become something beyond anything I could have imagined when I began this journey. But after a decade of intensity, I’m ready for the opposite. And so this year I’m focusing on ease, on loosening my grip on time and productivity. This morning, on the second day of my sabbatical, I slept till 7:10 (that’s late for me) and woke without an alarm. I’m about to leave on a longish bike ride — my first of the year — which will take a couple hours at least. Then at some point I’ll get to my shop to open up by 1 pm (yes, I’m open today, come visit!). While I’m there I’ll catch up on email. And I’m gonna try to move slowly through all of it, except maybe for the cycling part because I like to ride fast. For context, normally in my past life, I would have attempted to cram about six more significant tasks in the day (and worked my fanny off to tick them off the list). May this be a year of late mornings, deep breaths, loose plans, less accomplishment, and way, way more ease. Hope everyone has a great Friday. 💓

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True fact: one year ago I had the great fortune to interview @elizabeth_gilbert_writer on stage in San Francisco. It was one of the great experiences of my life, because Liz is a magical, light-filled being. Our conversation was recorded (as was the audience laughter and mine, because Liz is also freaking hilarious). There is a link to our conversation in my profile if you’d like to take a listen (and swipe to see a photo of us conversing). Anyhow, the illustration here is a quote of Liz’s that I hand lettered and illustrated with her permission for another book I’m working on (out in 2021, stay tuned). It’s just one example of the plain spoken wisdom she dispels in her book Big Magic, one of the best books about creativity ever written. Also, you might be asking, why are the people in most of my drawings wearing striped shirts? That, my friends, is because I love stripes. Hope everyone out there has a solid Monday. ❤️

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Because it’s my job, I never really stop drawing stuff, but sometimes I go through periods where I feel super MEH about making art. For the past two months I’ve traveling all over the U.S. for my book tour, and I have made very little art outside what I need to make to meet my book deadlines (yah, I’m currently working on three more books!). I’ll spare you chatter about overcommitting & burnout (I admittedly chose all of this), but I’m pretty sure that’s the reason I have so little interest at the moment in drawing anything for fun. I’m just plain tired. BUT the good news is, a) I’ve been through this before (more on that in a sec) and b) the timing is good, because I have a sabbatical from client work and books coming up next year (and I’m starting to realize how much I need it). For the record, this has happened to me about 259 times in the past twenty years that I've been making art (and more regularly since making art became my job thirteen years ago), so I know this too shall pass. I've learned to just let the slumps be. Some of my best work has come after of periods following slumps. One of the most awesome things about being a creative person is that to stay engaged in our work for the long haul we are forced eventually to experience slumps. And the positive side of slumps is that after they pass we get to start over and to be a beginner again. Being a beginner is the best because it means anything is possible. We always have that to look forward to. ❤️ Hope everyone has a great Thursday. (Print in shop, link in profile).

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