Seven-year-old Austen Gomez is a second grade student at Jamestown Elementary School. She is also an artist and entrepreneur, painting and selling her artwork at area vendor shows. Her business, quite naturally, is called Austen’s Art.
Austen has been drawing and painting since she was approximately 3 years old. She started creating with watercolors, but now uses acrylic paints as her preferred medium.
Austen had fun painting a large Christmas tree during a session at Wine and Design.
It has only been in the past year that she has taken her art from a pastime to a business. She designed two styles of business cards, then combined them to get the look she desired. She has a page on her mother’s website designated for her artwork and a Facebook page where she can post her favorite paintings.
“It has been cool to watch her artwork develop,” said her mother Christy. “When I told her she could probably sell her painting at vender events some day, she took that to mean now.”
Austen Gomez shows a variety of pictures she has painted for her family and her business.
Christy is a photographer who participates in vendor shows so Austen has seen what her mother does. When she received Christmas money from her grandfather, Austen decided to use it for art supplies. The rest — as the cliché goes — is history. One of her aunts asked Austen to paint a picture of a unicorn and purchased it. She sold to other family members and when she displayed at her first vendor event sold all the paintings she had taken.
“My teacher, Rhonda Holland, has bought one of my pictures and showed it to my class,” Austen said.
“I like painting seasonal images,” she added. “Fall is my favorite time and I paint a lot around that. When my dad said he wanted a picture of something under the sea, I did one in acrylic paint.”
Austen also enjoys painting custom pet portraits. She takes orders using a QR code at an event, a paper order form or a form online. She then paints using a photograph of her subject. Her pictures are usually done on 8×10 canvases, but when she recently painted a picture of two dogs together, she decided a bigger canvas would work better and used a 10×10.
She enjoys talking to people at vendor shows and selling her artwork.
“I like to shop at Michael’s,” Austen said when asked where she got her supplies.
Her parents have provided guidance about determining the price of a painting depending on the cost of materials.
Her skills are largely self-taught from observations. She has learned something about painting in her art classes at school, participated in a Wine and Design class and gotten some ideas from the Internet. Besides the pet portraits, much of what she paints comes from her imagination.
“She is such a natural at it, Austen does not realize she is learning techniques as she goes along,” Christy said.
“We are really proud of her,” Brant, her dad, noted.
Although she is currently selling her artwork, Austen still enjoys just creating paintings for her family or to hang in her own room. She paints a couple of times a month, more if a show is nearing or in the summer. She has added some craft items to her sales at the vendor shows.
Austen especially likes talking to people at the shows and selling her artwork. She has not decided if she wants to continue selling her work in the future, but for now is enjoying the process.
Her 5-year-old sister Ashlynn has not shown the same interest in art, but she does have her own business. “I walk dogs,” she said confidently.
To see examples of Austen’s Art, go to www.chgphotos.com/austensart.
