Times change and flexibility makes art more sellable when one art form isn’t popular. My illustrations are a mix of hand-drawn images with digital effects; my fine art paintings are acrylic — demand for each goes back and forth, and I never know for sure which one will bring in more interest at the moment.
As a part of our series about “5 Things I Wish Someone Told Me When I First Became An Artist” I had the pleasure of interviewing Rune Marie Nielsen.
Rune Marie Nielsen is a writer, painter, comic artist, and illustrator who seeks to show ‘a glimpse of divine eternity’ in her work. Her graphic novel Luris: Memories of Dreams depicts her firsthand experiences with CPTSD (Complex Post-traumatic Stress Disorder). Rune finds creativity in both the complex and simple aspects of life, from meditation and theology to the bowl of noodles she ate for lunch.
Thank you so much for doing this with us! Can you tell us the story of how you grew up?
From a young age, I’ve enjoyed both art and writing as forms of self-expression, even when I didn’t know what I wanted to express. I had a difficult childhood, experiencing abuse from my parents and acting excessively shy around my peers. When I was a child, art was an escape from the real world. After I was diagnosed with PTSD as an adult and needed to face my past head-on, art became a form of healing for me.
After being diagnosed with depression in middle school, my parents forbid me from telling anyone that I had mental illness. When I was diagnosed with PTSD as a young adult and living my own life, I was so fed up with the secret of mental illness bottled up inside me. I thought, “Screw that. I’m creating a graphic novel that will tell everyone that I have mental illness and I’m not ashamed.” I immediately started my pitch for my graphic novel Luris: Memories of Dreams, an illustrated story of PTSD-related dreams from my past. Because I had so many suppressed memories from my rough childhood, I often remember my dreams from childhood more clearly than the reality of the time.
Can you share a story with us about what brought you to this specific career path?
As far back as I can remember, art and storytelling have been my passion.
I am fortunate to remember being four years old and drawing my own comic strips. I was fascinated with Peanuts and Calvin and Hobbes, even though I had to rely on my older siblings to read the words aloud to me. For some reason, I was baffled by the fact that Peanuts never showed what the inside of Snoopy’s doghouse looked like. I kept wondering what Snoopy had in his doghouse, how big it was inside, and so forth, but no one I asked knew the answers. So, I finally drew my own version of what it could look like, contained within a four-block comic strip sequence of Snoopy inviting the reader to tour his home (turns out it was a storage room full of snacks stacked from floor to ceiling with a rubber duck thrown in there somewhere).
I also made my own stories into comic strips. I had forgotten a lot about those until recently when one of my siblings told me about what I used to draw. As a kid, I really wanted a dog but never had one, so I thought up a story about a crazy dog named Haywire who came from a mysterious hole in the ground. I made another comic strip about Squirmy, a dog from outer space capable of speaking English. Squirmy was one of an alien breed of dogs called Squirm Dogs and he had a cousin named Squeemy.
When I started middle school, my new obsession was manga. I was especially interested in action stories with fight sequences involving martial arts. Rurouni Kenshin, Naruto, and Yu Yu Hakusho were some of my favorites. Around that time, I also started painting lessons, which began my journey of pursuing two extremely different art interests side-by-side: fine art and cartoons.
Can you tell us the most interesting story that happened to you since you began your career?
When I was still an art major, I enrolled in a 2D animation class, having no idea that I was about to fail spectacularly and also plant the seeds for an artistic revelation later in life. One of the most basic assignments for animation beginners is to draw a walk cycle, an animation of a simple character putting one foot in front of the other, which would be played back a few times in a loop.
I kept drawing a crooked character slightly bent over with slumped shoulders and a twisted alignment of the hips. Those features meant that the character’s gait was abnormally off balance, so the walk cycle looked unnatural and not at all like the ones my peers submitted, even the ones that were least effective. I kept drawing and drawing, trying to make a proper version, and each time I couldn’t draw a character standing straight up. It felt like a disaster. I thought, ‘What kind of artist am I if I can’t draw a person standing up?’ I felt so ashamed.
Years later, I went to a chiropractor to check on my scoliosis, a condition I was born with that causes my spine to twist and bend. The chiropractor conducted an x-ray, which showed that I was missing a vertebra in my spine and that I had two vertebrae that were fused together. The bone structure of the x-ray looked oddly familiar to me. Then I realized that the bones of my back and hips in the x-ray matched the body lines I had drawn years ago for my character walk cycle in animation class. The angles of the shoulders, hips, and spine aligned with the character’s structure in my failed walk cycle assignment. Art reflects the artist! I had subconsciously been drawing myself. Once I made that realization, I was suddenly free from the pattern of drawing characters with abnormal postures. I could consciously create characters with upright spines. I think perhaps my body had been screaming at me, pleading for me to acknowledge my health problems and seek treatment.
What are some of the most interesting or exciting projects you are working on now?
I’ve begun a new style of combining abstract paint pouring with pet portraits, as well as creating fantasy art from paint pouring. My paint-poured pet portraits begin with an abstract paint-poured background, followed by delicate line work painted on top that carries the lines of the paint pouring into new lines that form images of specific pets. Conversely, my fantasy art does not include any line painting on top of the pouring, instead relying on the liquid cells in the fluid formula to shape the creatures. I’ve created fantasy paint pouring images of dragons and ghosts so far.
I continue to create traditional-style commissions for portraits of people and pets as well. I also provide digital art illustrations for the yearly Brave New Girls anthology, in addition to drawing illustrations for standalone publications. Recently, an interview with me about my mental illness experience was published in Many Pathways: 25 Real-Life Stories of Mental Illness & Recovery by Stephanie Greer.
In 2016, I published my graphic novel mentioned above, Luris: Memories of Dreams, which shares my personal experience with PTSD.
Who are some of the most interesting people you have interacted with? What was that like? Do you have any stories?
Pet influencers love to receive custom portraits of their pets, and I had the honor of painting the beloved orange cat Bilbo, who has over 118,000 followers on Twitter/X. The cat of author and streamer Ellen Murray, Bilbo is also the star of the book How to Be a Good Bboy, referring to Bilbo’s fan-given nickname B-boy. Ellen threw an online birthday party for Bilbo with hundreds of fans watching the stream on Twitch. She opened presents and birthday cards mailed to Bilbo while online attendees wrote comments in the chat that shared well wishes for their favorite cat. The party lasted over two hours and featured Bilbo indulging in birthday catnip and a cat-friendly birthday cake. I had never been to a birthday party for a cat before. Bilbo is a special little fluffball and I love him!
Another fascinating subject I’ve painted is martial artist, actress, and model Wei Lee. In 2008, she competed at the Summer Olympics as a member of Canada’s National Wushu Team (while wushu was included as an Olympics exhibition sport for that season). I’ve painted an image of Wei wearing a traditional king fu uniform while doing a martial arts pose, as well as portraits of her in cosplay outfits. Wei works with both traditional kung fu in films while also engaging in the creative arts of pop culture fashion, modeling characters from well-known anime. I feel like I can relate to her eclectic mix of career interests, since I paint traditional portraits in addition to modern paint pouring and drawing in the cartoon medium of manga. Wei is so kind and easy to talk to that you would assume she isn’t famous. Her humility and friendliness make her a very genuine person.
Where do you draw inspiration from? Can you share a story about that?
Unexpected inspiration can strike at any time. There have been many moments where I see a person, place, or animal, and I think “I have to paint this!” The urge to paint comes out of nowhere — there’s something indescribable in front of me that is so vivid in my mind that I must paint it. For example, I was at a cultural theme park in Shenzhen, China, when I saw one of the park workers, a woman wearing a beautiful traditional outfit, sitting at a table. She was seated in an elegant yet natural pose, her colorful skirt flowing gracefully around her ankles, pen in hand as ink surged onto paper, the hairpin in her bun extending towards her shoulder with poise. Her expression was calm and focused, as she was serenely unaware that I was inwardly gushing over how amazing the scene was. I took a photo and then felt bad that I hadn’t asked her permission to photograph her first. So, I then asked her if I could take a photo that I would paint from. She said it was totally fine, and I snapped a photo of her smiling at the camera. I used the first photo, the one with her calm and focused expression, for my painting.
Another example of inspiration striking at a random time is when a friend showed me her pet bearded dragon. I’d seen bearded dragons before, but something about hers made me forget whatever I’d been thinking about and just stare at it. Something about the way the light crossed its spiky texture and the stillness of its pose made me want to pain it right away. I started a sketch as soon as I could!
However, a second kind of inspiration starts with a person’s story. For example, while living in Hong Kong, I met many refugees and asylum seekers through the refugee ministry a church I interned at. One woman I got to know was a refugee from Egypt who came to Hong Kong with her husband and children. She was always doing her best to help her family and her community. I could sense a lot of strength within her gentle smile. When she told me about the challenges of her past and present, I felt like the secret of the strength behind her smile had been revealed. Someone told me that the woman had once mentioned that she would like to get her portrait professionally taken some day. I decided I would paint a portrait of her as a gift, so that she could have a painted portrait of her own.
How have you used your success to bring goodness to the world?
I contribute my art and communications skills to a variety of nonprofits supporting many different causes. I hope that my outspokenness about my PTSD will help people realize that PTSD is more common than they realize (anyone you meet could have it!). I’ve created free art pieces for church charity auctions, volunteered with illustrating and editing for publications by the Compassion Prison Project, and recently I’ve also begun helping with online communications and graphic design for the nonprofit Open Sky Gallery, a social justice art center in California that showcases art by formerly incarcerated persons.
The Brave New Girls book series, which I’ve provided a comic and illustrations for each year, donates its proceeds to the nonprofit Society of Women Engineers, helping women in college strive towards their engineering career goals. I’m glad that fulfilling my dreams can help others fulfill theirs!
What are your “5 things I wish someone told me when I first started” and why. Please share a story or example for each.
1 . You don’t have to get an art degree. Most often, success in art is measured by what you can do, not where you learned it.
When I started college, being an art major was exciting and a big part of my identity, but I had to let my ego go.
I started my undergraduate degree at a small liberal arts college. I was very attached to being an Art Major. It was a source of enjoyment and pride. But after two years of studying art, I came to the realization that having an art degree would not be very instrumental for moving ahead in a career. This realization came to me after I volunteered to help the college raise funds from alumni.
Students were encouraged to volunteer in an event in which we called up alumni and asked them to donate to the college. I volunteered for one of the phone rounds and was given a sheet of paper with information on each alumnus to call, including their phone number, major, year they graduated, and other details. Over half of the alumni on my list were art majors, since the college wanted the student callers to connect with potential donors over having a shared major. I called up at least 50 alumni, and all of the former Art Majors I spoke to said they regretted majoring in art. Many said that they were struggling with student loans after graduating in a major that didn’t help them find a job. They held a lot of resentment towards the college for not being clear about the career prospects of Art Majors. I realized I had to take the alumni’s advice and switch majors. Lacking an art degree has not held me back in my career.
2 . Art does not have to be ‘fine art’ in order to be highly regarded — cartoons are a valid form of art.
For most of my life, I’d been told that any form of cartoon art was inferior to fine art. It was assumed that anyone who considered themselves an artist would only make cartoons as a hobby, not as their ‘real art.’ Professors said that anyone who included cartoons in their professional portfolio was not taking art seriously.
However, I was pleasantly surprised to discover that this outlook is not the norm every country. When I was offered the opportunity to have my art on display at a venue in Hong Kong, I remember the conversation with the event coordinator when she informed me of policies about what kind of art was not allowed (for example, one of the stipulations was that images are not allowed to contain excessive gore). I knew the coordinator was aware that I produced both fine art paintings as well as manga-style artwork. I told her, “…and of course I won’t display any of my manga art.” She had a puzzled expression and asked me why that was. She said my manga art was high quality and belonged with the other pieces I had produced. The coordinator was surprised to hear that manga-style art would typically not be displayed at exhibits in the US. I was thrilled that I could display my manga-style pieces alongside my other art!
The venue, KUC Space, held two separate month-long exhibits displaying my work exclusively. The first one served as an introduction to the variety of themes I had worked with across my career and the second a few months later was Lunar New Year-themed. Each exhibit displayed around 25 of my art pieces.
3 . Using acrylic paint does not make you any less of a ‘real painter’ than using oil paints.
In my college experience with painting in fine art, I have been baffled by the intellectual battle between painters using oil paints and painters using acrylics. I took painting lessons from a professional painter in acrylic painting from middle school through high school, and my acrylics-using instructor was a well-respected artist.
However, when I arrived at college as an Art Major, I discovered that the college offered no courses in acrylic painting — the only options were watercolor or oils. I chose to take oils because the visual effects of oil paints are very similar to acrylics. The professor explained that acrylic paint was not as professional as oil paint because the ‘old masters’ (from Leonardo Da Vinci to Vincent van Gogh) had used oil paints, and any serious artist would want to follow in their footsteps. I struggled and struggled with painting in oils. I spent many weekends in the studio painting for long hours in order to get my oil paintings looking as decent as my acrylic ones.
There was a student in my oil painting class who was allergic to turpentine, a solvent used in oil painting that makes the paint thinner, and the instructor still expected her to use the chemical the same as everyone else. She had to sit through each class, blowing her nose and sneezing as her peers left out open jars of turpentine as they painted.
But if we needed to follow in the footsteps of the old masters, shouldn’t we be mixing our own paint instead of relying solely on store-bought tubes? Like many artists before the 20th century, Da Vinci and van Gogh gathered their own pigments from nature to handcraft their paints. So, using modern oil paint is just partially following tradition.
In my post-college career creating commissioned art, illustrations, and art for auctions and exhibits, I have never been criticized for using acrylic paint. I’ve never had a client turn down my work because it was not made with oil paint. I believe that acrylics and oils are equally professional paints. It doesn’t matter if an artist uses one or the other.
4 . It’s okay to work in multiple styles or media — you don’t have to stick to just one specialty.
In college, I was told that each artist should focus on just one kind of art in order to grow. That makes sense, but is it really taking too much of your time to learn a second method or specialty? My instructors discouraged students from creating works outside of the one theme and style. Focusing on just one type and subject of art can build up your technique, but for artists seeking to sell their work, the reality is that being skilled in at least two types of art will give you a better chance of earning money. Like every other kind of product for sale, there are trends in what kind of art is more in demand at any given time.
Times change and flexibility makes art more sellable when one art form isn’t popular. My illustrations are a mix of hand-drawn images with digital effects; my fine art paintings are acrylic — demand for each goes back and forth, and I never know for sure which one will bring in more interest at the moment.
5 . Learn from criticism. Put your ego aside when you receive a critique.
Once while I was painting a mural, a friend dumped some honest feedback on me. The hands of the people I painted didn’t look like hands. The hands were slanted, which made them look more like feet when a viewer stood parallel to the mural. Also, among the group of people painted in the mural was a boy with slightly-spiky ears and straight bangs, who happened to look like a young version of Spock from Star Trek. When my friend told me that, I could hardly stop laughing because what she said was so true. Sometimes subconscious patterns enter your mind and you don’t realize them until they are pointed out to you. As amusing as it was to have a younger Spock in a group of people painted in a mural, I had to change it. I couldn’t have one person in the painting crowd stand out for being an unintended sci-fi reference. Also, it’s possible that many of the mural’s viewers would have noticed the child looking like Spock but not have known the reference wasn’t intentional, and that could have interfered with understanding the mural’s message.
You are a person of great influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. 🙂
I cannot think of forming a new movement because there are already some wonderful movements that match my beliefs about how to improve the world we live in. One of them is called R U OK, based on the question “Are you okay?” which is an Australian initiative encouraging conversations to improve mental health. Studies show that mental health symptoms can be reduced, especially suicide attempts, when people speak up to show they care. It sounds very simple, but even asking someone who looks down “Are you okay?” can totally change their outlook. Listening is, of course, just as important. The main idea is that society needs to make it ‘okay to not be okay,’ that people are encouraged to share their honest feelings, not suppressing them anymore, and being receptive to others, including referring others to mental health resources when needed.
I also support some interfaith movements, such as the Hong Kong Interfaith Network on Religion and Peace, which brings together people of several different faith backgrounds to learn about each other’s spirituality in an open-minded and loving way. We don’t have to convert to another person’s religion in order to understand that religion, appreciate that religion, and befriend members of that religion. Learning about another religion does not mean that I am changing my own religion. It means that I am accepting and appreciating others. True peace depends on community.
We have been blessed that some of the biggest names in Business, VC funding, Sports, and Entertainment read this column. Is there a person in the world, or in the US whom you would love to have a private breakfast or lunch with, and why? He or she just might see this.
My art hero is Olga Soby, an artist YouTuber. She inspired me to try out paint pouring. Her videos are so uplifting and her art is full of soul!
What is the best way our readers can follow you on social media?
I can be contacted through my art site, runepainter.com, or through my Instagram, which showcases my hobbies and art (@runepainter).
This was very inspiring. Thank you so much for joining us!
Rune Marie Nielsen: 5 Things I Wish Someone Told Me When I First Became An Artist was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.