Blake Jamieson

It's never too late.

By printhouse.io

October 7^th, 2020

Blake Jamieson’s art enthusiasm first started when he was young, growing up in a creative household in San Francisco, California. Where he would be able to create throughout his childhood. Despite his creative upbringing, he had let the world influence him into thinking that art wasn’t a profitable career choice. He decided to go for a more traditional career, studying economics and working in marketing after college. It wasn’t until his 30th birthday when he decided that he would quit his corporate job and start developing his art skills. He left everything he ever knew behind to focus on a new career… in art.

Quitting a job and pursuing a completely different career at any point in time may sound like a scary endeavor, but to Blake this only brought excitement. He was ready to start using what he had learned from marketing to push his art into the walls of people. His first challenge was to teach himself the skills required to make his visions come to life. Seen as he didn’t go to art school, learning how to paint by himself might have posed a challenge at first, but as he went on and perfected his craft, he grew a following of people who admired his work and dedication.

In the beginning people would ask to purchase his pieces but he didn’t feel like they were ready to be sold yet, he wanted to take his artistic skill to a level where he would be proud of having it hang on people’s walls. The transition from making art and selling it was quite natural for him. He says it wasn’t even a conscious choice, but more like the logical direction in which he was headed. Thanks to his background in marketing, he was able to make this transition as he’s always thought that selling things is his strong suit.

One thing Blake wished he knew when he started:

“You can't make everyone happy. People always have an opinion. I would rather be polarizing than boring.”

On the other hand, he also wishes he had built his e-mail list earlier to encourage people to sign up or contact his newsletter more regularly. He thinks that a good e-mail list and keeping up with his newsletter are very important things in a business.

Blake has a wide variety of clients, ranging from all sorts of professional athletes to a company that turns his art into baseball cards. He has made portraits for basketball players such as Draymond Green and Lebron James; baseball players Rickey Henderson and Willie Mays, and other athletes like Muhammad Ali and Megan Rapinoe. He recently embarked on a project surrounding baseball cards, in which he has made cards of Bobby Witt Jr, Ronald Acuna, Roberto Clemente, Rickey Henderson and other talented baseball players.

With the perfect mix between art collectors and sports enthusiasts, his clients are a very specific but dedicated niche that shares likes and values with him. His ideal client would be someone with huge walls that allows him full creative freedom when creating.

He finds that the best way to communicate with his clients is through whichever platform they reached out through first. If a client likes to contact him through Instagram, Twitter, or through e-mail, he will reply through the same medium. This makes him multi-platform and allows him to reach out to his customers in a comfortable and easy way for them.

For Blake, using Printhouse was an advantage because we simply worked for him. We provided easy connection with his website and quality products for him to continue growing his business.