Meet Kerri Dixon | Wildlife Artist

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

Hi Kerri, what do you attribute your success to?
When I first started my online art membership, I was told that they will come for the lessons, but will stay for the community. And that is something I’ve held onto throughout my whole business building process and I believe it’s the reason for my success with a healthy and growing online art membership.

I have built an amazing community within my membership, that my students stay involved in and a big part of every month is for me to keep them interested and inspired to keep creating. Everyone who joins, comments on how lovely and supportive all the other members are, and it feels like your chatting with friends. Of course my retention rate is very high due to this community feeling as well. A lot of my members have met in person and are forming their own coffee groups in their own local areas.

Community is the most important piece of the puzzle to me. We have regular zoom calls, games and chats that all go along with the drawing tutorials inside the membership.

When I created my membership, I wanted to create something that I was missing. I live on a farm in a small rural area of Queensland Australia. Our closest shop is 40 minutes drive away. I could go on youtube or sign up for tutorial lessons, but no one had something that would keep me inspired and creating regularly. Which with art, it’s a skill and if you want to get better at it, it’s as simple as drawing more, which is why I wanted to build a platform that could keep others and of course myself creating regularly. Which it has and I’ve seen a huge improvement in both my students work and my own.

So definitely the success of my brand is from a lot of things but firstly it’s the community feeling I’ve created and keeping my students motivated.

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.
I am a realist wildlife artist working in the dry mediums of soft pastel, charcoal and graphite. I think most artists when starting out, try every medium out there. So I’ve done oils, acrylic, watercolours but it wasn’t until I discovered soft pastels that I really fell in love with them and even more so once I learnt that with pastels, it’s all about the paper. As an animal artist, I don’t think any other medium will give you the softness of coat, quite like pastels. I quite often receive comments of how the viewer feels they could just reach out and stroke the animal, which of course is a huge compliment to me and my style of painting.
I think my most remembered and biggest award was probably my first. I painted a very large scale, full face portrait of a Fraser Island Dingo for my husband, but wanted to enter it into a wildlife conservation competition being held in Canberra. $2400 on the piece, hoping it wouldn’t sell, but if it did, I’d be very happy with that price. This was about 7 years ago now. The Dingo painting sold within the first hour of the show opening and they told me they could of sold 6 more. I was blown away by this but of course my husband wasn’t impressed that I’d sold his painting haha.
Anyway, this first major sale, set my pricing structure which I have stuck to ever since with multiple more sales.
I am most proud of the art membership site The Creative Barn that I have created and I absolutely love teaching my techniques to others and seeing their joy as they become proud of there artwork. I also love to push them to show their work. We have a student exhibition every November, where I encourage all my students to put at least 1 or 2 pieces in, and I have also just finished a collaboration with them for a 2024 planner. It really opens their eyes up to what can be achieved as an artist. My members are mostly retired women looking for a hobby or getting back into art after many years of putting their family first. Most don’t think their art is worthy, and of course a lot of artists are introvers, but once I get them to start sharing what they are doing, and of course encouraging sales of their work, their whole personality changes and you can see the confidence starting to come out.
The main lesson I’ve learnt is that your never to old to start a new career or get into art and be successful, or even just doing it for the enjoyment of creating and making new friends.
Another part of my business that I am proud of is my art subscription box that I started last year and is for Australian residents only. It is an inspirational art box that teaches how to draw the endangered animal of the box, along with special gifts just for artists. But the main part is that for every box sold, $5 goes to a conservation fund for that animal.

If you had a friend visiting you, what are some of the local spots you’d want to take them around to?
I guess your talking about the city I live in. I am in Australia in rural Queensland on a farm, but if I was to take a friend to my closest town, it would be Hervey Bay to see the whales and we’d have breakfast on the beach at Enzo’s each morning. Then we would do a day tour across to explore Fraser Island. Dinner then at the Beach House or one of the many small ocean front restaurants and cocktail bars.

Shoutout is all about shouting out others who you feel deserve additional recognition and exposure. Who would you like to shoutout?
I would love to shout out The Maryborough Regional Art Society for giving me my first shot at teaching art. Without that I don’t think it would of ever crossed my mind to be an art teacher.

And secondly, to Stu McLaren and The Membership Experience. I took Stu’s course on how to create a thriving membership and it is what got me started online.

Website: https://www.kerridixonart.com

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kezart

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

Image Credits
Kerri Dixon