We had the good fortune of connecting with Lauren Ward and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Lauren, what led you to pursuing a creative path professionally?
All my life I have created art whether it was making clay figures, painting with acrylics, and even constructing objects out of cardboard. Deciding to pursue an artistic career was always in the cards for me as I knew it was the one thing that truly made me happy. Once I got into face painting at 14 years old, I realized it was as a way for me to transform myself into other characters and to escape reality for a few hours. It became some sort of therapeutic outlet for me and was the only hobby that I ever stuck with.

Can you open up a bit about your work and career? We’re big fans and we’d love for our community to learn more about your work.
My crazy hobby began back in 2014 when I saw a makeup artist by the name of “MadeYewLook” on YouTube turn herself into a voodoo doll through the use of body paints. It blew my mind! I had no idea people were using paint to completely transform themselves and I knew I wanted to try it out. After grabbing my moms makeup, I started shading and highlighting my face while following the tutorial online. I had no clue that in that moment my whole life would change as I fell in love with face painting. After that, I continued creating looks on myself for years to come and began growing my social platforms. It wasn’t until 2020 during the pandemic that my social platforms blew up and I finally had a larger audience online to see my work. My Tiktok grew to over 1 million and my Instagram had reached 100K. It took constant posting of new looks and the consistency of putting out new content in order for me to achieve that milestone I had been working on for years. I have always loved that work that I do so staying positive was the most important factor in making my dreams come true. Growing up, I was always a pretty quiet kid and never really talked about myself. We moved a lot throughout my childhood for financial reasons and making friends became difficult for me. I knew that we would probably end up moving again and I would have to start all over which meant losing the friends I had made. Growing my social media accounts had given me a way to make friends all over the world and it didn’t matter if I were to move because they would always be there! I had formed an online community of friends that supported me and stayed with me no matter where I moved to.

If you had a friend visiting you, what are some of the local spots you’d want to take them around to?
I spent most of my time growing up in a town close to Orlando so I have wide list of places I absolutely adore. My all time favorite spot would be Walt Disney’s Magic Kingdom and I would hang out there all the time with my family or by myself. Amongst the chaos of the park, I would sit and doodle images of Cinderella’s castle or any other cool object in front of me. My favorite spot to eat is the quick eat spot across from the carousel where they have the BEST tater tots topping with macaroni and cheese, bacon, chives, and sour cream. I grew up surrounded by theme parks so I would head over to Universal studios to get the Orange fizz drink in Diagon Alley which is delicious. The parks have everything you need for a great time including food, drinks, and of course there’s plenty of people watching to do which is one of my favorite pastimes!

The Shoutout series is all about recognizing that our success and where we are in life is at least somewhat thanks to the efforts, support, mentorship, love and encouragement of others. So is there someone that you want to dedicate your shoutout to?
My mom has always inspired me to create no matter what craft I was interested in at the time. She has supported my face painting from the very beginning and has only encouraged me to create more characters over the last nine years. She has even helped me conjure up ideas for makeup looks when my artistic block gets in the way.

Instagram: Lauren Ward (@fx_freak) • Instagram photos and videos https://www.instagram.com/fx_freak/?hl=en

Youtube: https://youtube.com/@fxfreak

Other: Linktree- https://linktr.ee/fx_freak TikTok- Lauren Ward (@fx_freak) – TikTok https://www.tiktok.com/@fx_freak

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