After discovering this site and reading some of the content you may naturally begin to wonder who is this Marc guy and why would I want to learn about art with him?
Well, allow me to introduce myself. I’m Marc Anthony.
The true beginning of my artistic journey started when I was a teenager and discovered I was somewhat okay at drawing. In high school, I used to draw quite regularly but at some point, I moved on from it.
I always maintained an artist’s eye on life and always had creative outlets along the way but it wasn’t until 2018 that I began to start working in the visual arts again.
There was just this need to create something with my hands and as a result, I decided I wanted to try painting.
I had always wanted to try it but never really had before. So I decided it was time and went out to the local hobby store to buy some supplies.
The Second Beginning
After picking up some paint supplies and making my first couple of paintings I was hooked again.
Before I knew it I was loading up on acrylic paint and canvasses. Now I’m beginning to identify as an Abstract Painter but I like painting all sorts of things in an effort to push my skills forward.
For me, painting started off as an intellectual pursuit.
It was a way to challenge myself and get the reward of the creative process. I didn’t realize at the time how pushing my creative boundaries would push me to grow in so many ways.
It was around this time that it dawned on me that this pursuit would be the perfect subject to create a website on.
Website making is one of my many creative pursuits over the years and while I had one moderately successful web brand in the past I had been on the hunt for something new to pursue for some time.
That was when I started this site. For more on the history of the Art With Marc brand as a separate entity from me check out this page here!
At first, I only wrote a couple of pages and then didn’t do anything with it for about 6 months. Then finally in October of 2019, I decided I was going to take it more seriously and really work towards building up the site as I build up my experience and knowledge.
I figured having to write about what I was learning would help accelerate my growth as an artist while helping to build up myself as a brand.
Getting Hit By 2020
I am currently writing this in December of 2020 and what a hell of a year it has been.
Now, I’m not normally one to get into new years resolutions. I prefer to maintain the mindset that one shouldn’t wait for the new year to go after their desires but for some reason this year I was in the mood.
I decided to make it a blog post, which you can check out here, that I had finished writing on the morning of January 2nd. I didn’t publish it that morning because I had to jet out the door to work and still wanted to review and polish it up a bit before I did.
I had some lofty goals that morning and I certainly will not meet them by the end of this month but I at least made headway on many of them.
That morning as I left I was feeling like 2020 was going to be amazing!
My plan was immediately derailed when I was hit by a car riding my bike to work that day.
That was how my 2020 started!
In all honesty, I was very lucky not to have been injured worse than I was. I had 10 broken ribs, 3 fractures in my knee, and a severely sprained shoulder all on the left side of my body.
Sneezing was my worst enemy for the next several months!
It sucked but I’ve always been one to try and look at the positive side of things. I felt lucky to be alive and not be some sort of vegetable. I wasn’t even wearing a helmet! So stupid! SMH…
The incident shook my very soul though. While I didn’t really come close to dying I couldn’t stop thinking about what if I had died. What would I have left behind?
I couldn’t stop thinking about the moment I got hit and the seconds in between getting hit and flying through the air. This lead to one of my first emotional or experience-inspired paintings.
This painting I feel captures the surrealness of the experience. The weirdest part of it all is right before I got hit I had the passing thought of “I’m going to get hit by a car” and as soon as the thought came and went through my mind I felt the impact.
This painting captures that moment where I’m consciously aware that I literally just thought about getting hit by a car and then felt the impact on my back immediately afterward.
It captures the flow state my mind went into in that moment as I was consciously aware of flying through the air and the fact that I got hit. The utter shock I felt at being fully aware of the situation.
I couldn’t help but think “holy shit I got hit” as I flew through the air, eyelids closed awaiting whatever happened next. I wasn’t at all prepared for the sequence of events that would follow.
Besides the excruciating pain when I finally did hit the ground, and the fact that the driver that hit me never came back, 2020 was just getting started. It was only January 2nd!
Just as I was starting to get back to work in March here comes a global pandemic!
Going All In On Becoming a Creator
I did my best to continue to create art and work on content throughout the first few months of the year while I was still recovering.
Shortly after getting out of the hospital, I said I’m not going to let this stop me. I looked at my objectives for the year and decided the easiest thing I could do at the moment was start an Instagram account.
I was able to get my Instagram account started and off the ground. That is growing quite steadily to date.
At the time of writing this, it is one of the best places to reach me and keep up to date with what is going in in the Art With Marc studio. Instagram is usually one of the first places new ideas or projects I’m working on get put out to the world.
As the year went on and the situation with the pandemic got worse I saw a breakdown in how the company I worked at was functioning and treating its people. It became much more stressful than it needed to be.
It was apparent to me they were taking full advantage of the situation knowing they could overwork their employees and everyone would be too scared to try and leave.
It was about this time I started considering joining Income School’s Project 24. It was just hitting the halfway point of the year when I had barely enough money saved up to justify it.
I had been following Jim and Ricky for a couple of years already and they really helped inspire me to give the whole online game another try when I originally created the site in 2019.
From my previous forays in website building, I knew what they preached was the truth. I had done it before myself. Just not ever to the level or degree that they spoke about.
Luckily getting hit by a car didn’t only give me broken ribs and injuries though. While I wasn’t fortunate enough to get legal justice I was able to get some financial justice. The morning I was on the fence about joining the program I got the news that I would be getting some level of compensation.
So I made the decision to join the P24 program which has definitely helped me take this site and my brand-building skills to the next level.
After several months of working on their program and seeing the success others in the community are having, knowing what I know from my previous experiences, and having solid financing I decided to go all-in on being a full-time creator.
I quit my job a few months ago and am never looking back. From here on out I am a creator. I will create many things for the Art With Marc brand and I will create many more brands as well.
I do have an idea for a second brand in a more athletic niche that I am actively planning to launch eventually. That will have to wait until I get AWM into a profitable and sustainable brand.
If you’re interested in learning to build your own website like this so you can start building your very own art brand or art business I highly recommend Income School’s Project 24 program. While I use it primarily to understand and master the business of blogging they also have a YouTube track as well.
I cannot possibly overstate the value of being a part of this amazing program and awesome creator community!
As an artist, I think I have grown quite substantially this year.
Now, with the year coming to a close I have 108 canvas paintings completed and in my collection. On the website, there are 65 posts of content. It should be interesting to see where things will go in the year to come now that I can put 100 percent of my attention into creating.
Life is too short not to go after the things you want to get out of it. Quitting my job in the middle of a pandemic that the country I live in has handled terribly was perhaps one of the hardest decisions I have ever made.
I have a gut feeling it’s one that will pay dividends in the long run.
I’m 34 years old and it feels like my life is just beginning. Join me on my journey!
