Rising Stars: Meet Christine Lindstrom

Today we’d like to introduce you to Christine Lindstrom. 

Hi Christine, so excited to have you on the platform. So, before we get into questions about your work life, maybe you can bring our readers up to speed on your story and how you got to where you are today.
I have always been passionate about living a creative life while finding a way to bring beauty and joy into the world. Making a career as an artist has felt like the most natural path I could take, and I could have never imagined not pursuing art as my livelihood. 

Always surrounded by nature, I started drawing and painting at a very young age growing up in New Jersey. Most of my time was spent on wooded trails or on the beach. After high school, I went on to study fine art at Savannah College of Art and Design and then Monmouth University near my hometown. Upon graduating, we were right in the middle of the 2008 economic crisis, and I was working several jobs to try to make it on my own. Starting out as a sugar artist for a wedding cake decorator, I also took a position at Anthropologie as one of their visual merchandisers. Working endless hours, commuting in heavy traffic, and barely scraping by, was not my idea of the type of life I wanted to live. There was a pivotal moment when I knew that this was my chance to start something for myself, and that was when I discovered that there were so many opportunities emerging for artists online. 

I first started out on Etsy as one of their early adopters, going on to develop my own website to sell my work. I quickly became one of Etsy’s top 1000 artists at that time. Between my own website and Etsy, this led me to working with companies to put my art on a variety of products that are now carried at stores such as Wayfair, Anthropologie, West Elm, Crate + Barrel (and so many more). I went on to manufacture my own products, and I continue to design everything I can imagine. 

After moving around along the east coast for the past few years, I fell in love with Raleigh and the state of North Carolina. The fact that we have a vibrant city, with mountains or shoreline just a short drive away, made it an easy choice to settle down here. Although I’m new here, it already feels like home. 

I am currently branching out in my business to provide consulting services, business coaching for creatives, as well as a YouTube channel and podcast all about living a creative life and making a career as an artist. 

Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way? Looking back, would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
This entrepreneurial journey has certainly had its highs and lows. Between changing trends, new social media platforms and algorithms, needing to learn new technology, and fluctuating consumer needs, wants, and spending habits, I have always had to stay on my toes and continue learning. I find that I am constantly needing to adapt, which makes this career both stressful and exciting. I have also tried so many different avenues to get my work out there, and I’ve had my fair share of failures and disappointments when branching out into new territory. For instance, I learned very quickly one summer while setting up at craft fairs every week in Philadelphia that I really do not have it in me to handle an entire booth at a fair. Weather is not your friend when selling at outdoor events! All the lessons I have learned have made me more confident about trying new things and exploring new ideas as I’ve grown though. 

As you know, we’re big fans of you and your work. For our readers who might not be as familiar, what can you tell them about what you do?
I specialize in a variety of media, but I am most well-known for my watercolors and oil paintings. Most of my work includes some elements of nature, with a little bit of abstraction, magic, and memory mixed in. Colors play a large part in all of my work, and I would consider myself to be a maximalist in terms of my design aesthetic. I have never liked anything beige! I enjoy both detailed realism and blurring the lines of the shapes and forms in my work to create a story that might come across as somewhat dreamlike in many of my pieces. 

Have you learned any interesting or important lessons due to the Covid-19 Crisis?
The pandemic has certainly been a rollercoaster for my work and my life. When it started, I had just relocated to South Florida, barely knowing anyone at the time, and absolutely terrified that I was so far away from my family. My business itself did begin to do much better with everyone at home suddenly shopping online. I had recently designed a series of journals, and it seemed like self-care and mental health awareness was a big focus for a lot of people. Florida handled everything in a much different way than the rest of the country, so that was also quite jarring to witness over the course of the few years that I lived there. As the months went on, and people started to venture out into the world again, my sales started to suffer, and rent prices started to drastically increase in my area. I eventually made the choice to possibly live elsewhere, as the area became more and more crowded, cost of living became unbearable, and my revenue streams were all down due to both supply chain issues with the brands I partner with and slow sales in general on my own channels. I have watched firsthand over the last year as our economy is gradually getting worse and worse. I prefer not to think about how difficult some of those months were over the course of 2022, and I truly hope things start to improve in this country in terms of inflation, housing, and the overall well-being of our country. This pandemic has been very hard on everyone, and I think, more than ever, we need to rely on one another to get through to the other side. 

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.christinelindstrom.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/christine__lindstrom/
• Facebook: http://facebook.com/shopmaiautumn
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@christine_lindstrom
• Other: https://maiautumn.etsy.com 

Image Credits
Christine Lindstrom
Jenny Minns