Today we’d like to introduce you to Meadow Hearn.
Hi Meadow, thanks for sharing your story with us. To start, maybe you can tell our readers some of your backstory.
I’ve been an artist for as long as I can remember. I started drawing horses when I was two years old, and creating has always been the way I make sense of the world. I tend to see beauty and possibility everywhere, and I’ve always wanted to capture that feeling and create little worlds that other people can step into.
For more than a decade, I worked as a designer, building websites, brands, and digital experiences for other people and businesses. It taught me so much about visual storytelling and how to turn an idea into something tangible, but art was always quietly running underneath it all. I never really stopped being an artist. I was just putting that part of myself on the back burner while I built a career.
Eventually, I realized I didn’t want to keep waiting to make art the center of my life. I started painting more seriously, creating every day, and sharing my work. That small decision grew into exhibitions, commissions, my own art business, and a completely different way of thinking about what I want my life to look like.
My work today is very much about the way I see the world. I’m drawn to the resilience and beauty of the desert, the spirit of horses, the vastness of the American West, and the strange little moments that make life feel magical. I love moving between realism and abstraction because sometimes the most honest way to portray something isn’t to paint exactly what is there, but to paint how it feels.
I think I’m ultimately trying to create a world that feels a little more beautiful, curious, hopeful, and alive. After spending so many years creating for other people, it feels incredibly meaningful to finally be creating from that place for myself.
Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
It has and it hasn’t.
I’ve always had this calling toward art, but I was always told that art wasn’t lucrative. You can’t make a living as an artist. It’s called “starving artist” for a reason. So I went into design. It was a way to stay creative, but also have a career that felt safe and practical.
Then I experienced severe corporate burnout and lost my job, and with it, I lost a big part of my identity and psychological security. I had spent years believing I was choosing the safe path by going into design, only to discover that there really is no such thing as a safe path. The career I had built my identity around could disappear just as quickly as anything else. I remember thinking, Who was I now that I wasn’t a web designer?
That question ended up taking me somewhere really unexpected. I started thinking about what brought me joy as a child. What did I love before I started thinking about careers and practicality? What was I innately gifted with? And how could I use my voice in a way that could heal and bring joy to other people?
For the first time in years, I started drawing and painting again. And it felt like coming back to a part of myself that had been waiting for me. Then the commissions started coming, one after another, and I started to feel this spark. I was asked to hang my art in Humble House, a local coffee house. Then was asked to do a solo art show at Miner’s Alley Performing Arts Center. Then. Then. Then. One green light after another made my decision to pursue my dreams feel like it was finally in alignment. I realized that I didn’t have to play by anyone else’s rules, I could make my own.
It’s still scary. But the unknown always is. I’m learning to trust myself, to live authentically, and to believe that I don’t have to have everything figured out before I take the next step. And I’m incredibly lucky to have such a beautiful, loving community around me, cheering me on and lifting me up every day. I don’t think I would have had the courage to follow my dreams without the love and support of my incredible partner, Brandon. He inspires me every day to work for what I love, to believe in what’s possible, and to keep going after the life I truly want.
I don’t know exactly where this road is going to take me, and I’m sure there will be struggles along the way. But I don’t want to look back someday and wonder what could have happened if I had really gone for it.
I want to give it everything I have.
Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your work?
I mostly paint. Some people are drawn to the mountains, some to the ocean, but my heart is in the desert. I’m known for my interpretations of desert landscapes, cacti, horses, and the spirit of the American West. I’m drawn to the resilience of the desert, the way life can exist in such harsh and beautiful places, and the stories and energy that seem to live within the landscape.
When I create something, I put a piece of myself into it. But once it’s finished, it’s no longer mine. The moment someone else looks at it, they bring their own memories, nostalgia, experiences, and feelings to it. Whatever I was feeling when I painted it becomes intertwined with whatever they feel when they see it. In that way, the artwork becomes the viewer’s.
That is what I hope my work can do. I want it to bring people peace, joy, and hope. I want them to see the imperfectness in my work and feel excitement, energy, connection, and life. I don’t want everything to feel perfectly polished or resolved. I want there to be something alive in it.
I also want my work to be a way of bringing awareness to and honoring First Nations people, their histories, their deep connection to the land, and the knowledge and strength they have carried for generations. There is so much that we can learn from those relationships with the land, and I want my art to help tell those stories and inspire people to care about protecting them.
What I’m most proud of, though, is what my art has given me personally. It has brought me closer to my family in a way I never expected. My parents have become incredibly supportive of my work, and that has healed something in me. For so long, the message was that pursuing art might not be a safe or practical path. To now have my parents cheering me on feels incredibly meaningful to the younger version of me who always wanted to be an artist.
I’m proud that I get to share this journey with the people I love. I get to share the paintings, the exhibitions, the commissions, the little wins, and the big ones with my partner and my family. And I think that might be what sets my work apart most: I’m not just trying to make something beautiful. I’m trying to make something that feels alive, means something to me, and eventually becomes meaningful in its own way to someone else.
Is there something surprising that you feel even people who know you might not know about?
I’ve lived a lot of lives.
Something that might surprise people who know me primarily through my art is that I also sing and play guitar. And I’m a damn fine campfire guitar player ;).
Music has been such a huge part of my journey. I’ve gone on the road supporting friends in bands, had some of the best experiences of my life, experienced loss and grief, and collected a whole lot of stories along the way. So much of that life has stayed with me and found its way into my art. I think of music as decorating time the way art decorates space. It has been there through so many chapters of my life, and those experiences have shaped the way I see and create.
The music, the grief, the stories, the people, and the time spent on the road have all found their way into my art, even if they aren’t always obvious in the finished piece. I think everything we experience becomes part of the way we create.
My partner, Brandon, has taught me a lot about what it means to lead, work hard, solve problems, and keep building even when things get complicated. Watching him put so much of himself into the things he creates has shaped the way I’ve approached building my own business. There’s something really beautiful about watching someone you love put their whole heart into what they do. He’s reminded me that building a business can be creative in itself, and that there is real value in creating something that feels deeply personal.
One of the things I love most about this chapter of my life is having the freedom to be there for him and help with his business, while also building something of my own. I don’t think I realized before how much I would love that kind of life, where the things I create and the people I love can exist alongside each other.
You can’t grow flowers without rain. Some of the things that have been hardest in my life have also become part of the soil that my art grew from. There are a lot of lives, stories, people, and experiences living underneath the surface of what I create.
I think I’m finally learning that I don’t have to choose between all the different parts of who I am. I can be an artist, a designer, a partner, a friend, a business owner, and a million other versions of myself, and they can all exist together. All of the lives I’ve lived, the people I’ve loved, the places I’ve been, the hard things I’ve experienced, and the beautiful things I’ve gotten to be part of have brought me here. I’m still figuring it out, but I’m no longer waiting until I have everything figured out to live the life I want. I just want to keep creating, keep loving, keep learning, and hopefully leave a little more beauty, joy, connection, and hope in the world than I found.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://meadowhearnart.com/
- Instagram: @meadowhearn_creative
