Mindy Sommers

I would like to be a cat. They are so very beautiful and independent, they are not to be tangled with. Graceful and sleek, you have to earn a cat's love. They just don't give it to anyone.

I was an account executive and creative director at a New York City advertising agency. I never dreamed I'd be an artist. I was a writer first and foremost. My mother was the artist in the family, and I didn't think I could compete with her. I was writing stories at five, so the family just assumed I'd be a writer. So did I.

When I first got married, a friend of mine sent me a copy of Photoshop. It was like the sky cracked open and a different kind of life began. It was that dramatic for me. I became addicted. I couldn't stop creating and playing with it. I spent so many hours teaching myself digital art that it impacted my marriage for a time.

In 2004, my husband quit his job and bet on the fact that we could support ourselves by selling my art. Through years of being online, I developed a presence and online following. People told me they liked my art and wanted to buy it. So we bought equipment to enable us to print my art on ceramic tile, glass and tumbled stone. We opened "Color Bakery" a custom tile and art gift company, and doubled down that we'd beat the odds and make it. It was like jumping off a cliff without a parachute but the Gods were kind. We succeeded. We didn't become millionaires but we were able to pay our bills. And then, in 2010, my life (and art) veered in another direction. A man whose name I knew (he owns a Vermont art licensing company not far from where I live) called me on the phone one Saturday morning. He liked my art and wanted to represent me. That's when my art career really began, when manufacturers and large companies thought enough of my art to print it on their products. I knew the minute this man called that nothing would be the same. It turned out I was right about that.

Years ago, I probably would have said "purple." Not today. All colors are glorious, even the unsexy ones like brown and orange (I used to hate orange) can just knock me out if they are used in the right way. I like extremes: either very saturated or barely saturated. Either very gritty or painfully feminine. Anything that goes overboard gets my attention.

I would have to say other artists. All of them. Anyone who picks up a camera, wacom pen or paintbrush is my inspiration. It's magical how there is creativity and ideas everywhere: a shadow on the floor in a photo, a texture in a gouache painting, an old piece of scrap calligraphy. It's simply everywhere.

I started my artistic journey with fractals, then I got into post processing them in Photoshop and making impossible dreamscape scenes. Then I went to vintage, and I was deeply into vintage collage for some years. Then I learned how to digitally paint, and stop depending so much on filters and plugins and more on my own ingenuity and creativity with brushes and layers. I love that digital art is an endless ocean of possibility; I learn something new every day.