Meet Bri Custer | Artist & Educator

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

Hi Bri, what was your thought process behind starting your own business?
When I officially started my art business in 2018, it was on the side of a full-time office job. I hadn’t painted consistently since graduating in 2014 and I desperately missed painting. I wanted to recommit to my practice and sharing that work through my website and social media felt like a natural extension of that process. I earned my Master’s in Education during that time and started teaching K-8 art, but when the pandemic led us to remote teaching during my first year, I really struggled to feel connected to my job. My first year of teaching was also my last and I went all in on my painting practice and started The Non-Toxic Crit Group, which is a workshop helping artists to dive deeper into their creative practice and connect with other artists in a meaningful way.

Alright, so let’s move onto what keeps you busy professionally?
I am a painter with major interests in perception, color, and memory, and I use landscape painting as a vehicle to explore these ideas. Painting en plein air (outside in the elements) challenges the limitations of my perception. I’ve long considered the synonymous relationship between perception and short-term memory in my painting practice, but more recently I’ve been curious about the way episodic, or long-term memory, informs how I choose the landscapes I paint. When I set out, I look for a place that feels familiar and if I manage to find it, a tenderness drives the process. I find that places can hold a kind of charge–an emotional history–like when you return to a place you’ve frequented and as you explore, past experiences in that place unfold from memory. The painting becomes a reaction to both the visual and emotional space of moments past and present.

I am honestly just so proud to be living and working in a way that honors myself, my wants, and needs, and what I’m good at. I grew up between two low-income households. We moved often and there were difficult periods of trauma, but I found myself at school, especially in the art room. I was an overachiever motivated by anxiety and a need to escape my circumstances. Teachers recognized and encouraged me, I fed off of that external validation, and I attended the University of New Hampshire as a first-generation college student majoring in Fine Art.

I’m really privileged that it shook out the way it did, that I had teachers that encouraged me, and that I had the temperament to work my butt off rather than shut down. These days I’m working on undoing my people-pleasing coping strategies and an achievement mindset that is no longer serving me. I trust my own voice as the highest authority in the studio.

If you had a friend visiting you, what are some of the local spots you’d want to take them around to?
In New Hampshire, we would head to the seacoast! We would walk around Portsmouth, grab tacos at Barrio, and drive up to Fort Foster in Kittery, Maine to walk the trails and sit on the beach.

Shoutout is all about shouting out others who you feel deserve additional recognition and exposure. Who would you like to shoutout?
There are so many people whose support I value on a regular basis, but in this moment I want to shout out to my partner, Bryan. The decision for me to jump ship on a really stable teaching career to be a full-time artist was scary for both of us, but even in the constant uncertainty that comes with this, he is always the first person I go to for encouragement. We both work from home, so I often commandeer his attention to for support or his opinion. He spends many weekends helping me frame paintings and we recently renovated my studio which took up most of our free time for months. I honestly wouldn’t be able to do this job without him and I am so immensely grateful.

Website: https://bricuster.com/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brianna-custer-0482638b/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/BriCusterPaintings/

Image Credits
Raya on Assignment