We had the good fortune of connecting with Brooke Major and we’ve shared our conversation below.
Hi Brooke, can you walk us through the thought-process of starting your business?
Born and raised in Atlanta Ga, I grew up in an entrepreneurial family. My maternal grandmother was a self-enterprising businesswoman with many hair salons and beautician schools that she owned and managed. My father, a Los Angeles native, has always liked creating new businesses and excelled in real estate and marketing, Thanks to these influences in my life, I have pursued a career as a full-time artist, for painting has been a passion of mine since I was 3 years old. Consequently, horses have been a part of my life since the same age and have led me to breed horses for the sport of show jumping in Normandy, France. Creation is an essential part of my life, so I create my own paintings to represent a sort of “diary” of my life. Inspired by farmland, European architecture, and horses, my paintings depict images that have marked me as an observer. The risk taken to be a career artist may seem big for most, but I consider it the best way to make a living while making a life.
Conventional advice I disagree with is getting a job you don’t like in order to afford living expenses until you can financially support yourself. We have such a short time on this earth, doing what we love is more important than anything. There is always a job related to your passion that you can work at happily until you make a name for yourself. I worked with horses as a means of financial stability for a while, but in retrospect, I think working for a gallery or a museum are also excellent options for artists looking to meet people to help them grow in their career as an artist.
Everything we do is a risk.. Working a 9-5 job is a risk for it becomes then restraining you from creating your own business and owning a business.is a risk for you are not guaranteed success in that business. I’d rather risk what I am passionate about for my own business rather than someone else’s.
Habits needed for success would be measured in the number of hours and time invested in their field to allow it to become reality. While some are sleeping at 5 am, or going to bed at 10 pm, the passionate person is awake working to complete goals and make their dreams come true. It will be the extra hours, the innovative ideas and the love of what they do that will determine the success of their passions. It becomes quite addictive and fun, almost like a game, once one understands this.
My inspiration for great success and desire to create more would come from my son. I would like to raise him to be the most dynamic and creative person, to believe in what he loves and to practice what his heart tells him to.
Let’s talk shop? Tell us more about your career, what can you share with our community?
Early on I understood that I had to create something that would put me in a category of “unique”. After playing around with shadow and light in painting, I decided to take light (white paint) and create shadow through bas-relief, or thick paint that is sculpted to create forms in the paint. Since oil paint is essentially very thick and rich, I chose this medium by default. I am proud to have won numerous prizes in salons in France, notably two where my work was selected as the winner of the Grand Prix of the Rene Clement Bayer Salon, I have also won the prize of the city in Champagne sur Seine. This winter, I was very lucky to have a solo show in La Bottega Gallery in Laguna Beach California. I am very excited about new exhibits coming up this summer at the Whiteside Gallery in Cashiers, North Carolina as well as The Thomas Deans Fine Art group show in Atlanta GA and the Bee Street Gallery in Dallas and Fort Worth Texas. New galleries are contacting me and I should soon have work in galleries in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, Charleston, South Carolina, Nashville, Tennessee, and Steamboat Springs Colorado!
If you had a friend visiting you, what are some of the local spots you’d want to take them around to?
Although I am not native to LA, I have visited California quite often as a child. My favorite spots would be Venice Beach and the train ride up and down the California coast. It was like being in the movie “Some Like It Hot”. The sushi restaurants in LA are to die for and the Mexican restaurants are out of this world. A big fan of “The Big Lebowski”, I always make it a point to go at least once to “The In and Out Burger” for the fun of it.
Shoutout is all about shouting out others who you feel deserve additional recognition and exposure. Who would you like to shoutout?
Since leaving out someone would be unfair: I would like to shout out to my parents for being such great contributors to the distribution and logistics of my work in the USA, to my husband for babysitting my horses while on the road for exhibitions, shows, and work, to my best friend Benjamin for his continued support and logistics with my paintings in Europe, and to all of the galleries that support, market and sell my work on a daily basis. Thank you ALL.
Website: https://brooke-major.com/en/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/brookeseeart/
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brooke-major-86356058/