Daily Inspiration: Meet Lewis Wilson

I went to school for Illustration and graduated from Rochester Institute of Technology in 1994. Moved to Raleigh in 1995 and found a job at IBM in 1996. I worked there for three years mostly doing PowerPoint presentations, some Illustrations but most importantly was introduced to Web Design in 1998. I started a new job at BB&T in 1999 which was a rather big year for me personally in that I also got married and had our first child.

I continued working at BB&T – became Online Creative Director in 2008 and have worked there since in the online space. In 2015, I picked up watercolor from a friend who gave me a palette and I reluctantly gave them a try because I never had much success with to that point. Something clicked though for me and I have been hooked ever since that point.

I started by painting local downtown scene in Apex and posted on Facebook. I got several likes and comments. Someone asked for a print and I painted another scene which received the same amount of Social Media attention. Having seemed to have stumbled upon something which I had not expected, I painted more scenes and eventually took them to stores while still posting paintings on Social.

In 2017 my wife experimented with taking my artwork and putting it on an ornament. We initially started pasting the print inverted and face down and not long after that came to the realization that we could simply paste the print face up and cut the ornament output time exponentially!

Lew Wilson Art had been in the works with prints to that point and adding ornaments took it to another level. Sales started substantially increasing with the introduction of ornaments, several stores carry our products and we also started fundraising with schools and causes.

Our “office” started with a tiny student desk I got on Craigslist set against the wall of our bonus room. Today that room is busting at the seams which is a very welcome problem!

We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
Our road has been fairly smooth though it’s hard to balance a full-time job and what has become another full-time job especially around Christmas.