Mariah Smith. Photos: Chris Emeott
Mariah Smith seamlessly merges creativity and entrepreneurial savvy.
When Mariah Smith started using oil paints, she hated it. “I tried it in an unventilated room and got a huge headache. There’s paint thinner that traditional artists use, and I didn’t know you were supposed to ventilate,” she says. She thought to herself, “I am never doing this again.”
Smith’s always been an artistic person. With a decade-long career in video production, she has an eye for detail and aesthetics. Painting was a hobby that she engaged in when she could. “Whenever I had free time, I always spent that doing art stuff, but I never saw that being my career,” she says. “I always treated it as a side thing, a hobby, a passion project.”
Plenty of people can relate to seeing their artistic or crafty pursuits as something meant for leisure time and couldn’t possibly consider turning it into a business. Sometimes, in fact, a hobby is only enjoyable because it’s not intertwined with the pressures and stress of turning it into a business.
Smith, however, comes from an entrepreneurial lineage. “My grandfather was very creative and an engineer. He founded a snowmobile company called Scorpion Snowmobiles,” she says. “He was an adventurer but had a really keen eye for aesthetics.” Smith is the youngest of four children, and she says all her siblings inherited their grandfather’s spirit for creation in some way. “We all turned out really creative and entrepreneurial,” she says.
Whether in her studio or on the go, Mariah Smith enjoys her craft wherever she can. Smith’s portable painting kit allows her to set up wherever inspiration strikes.
In 2020, when Smith’s work in video production slowed down and she found herself with a lot more free time due to the COVID-19 lockdown, she started thinking that her oil painting practice—with her discovery of 100 percent nontoxic oil paints—could become something more. “That was the first time I ever really thought about selling my paintings. I dove into it heavily, and I got a lot of positive responses,” Smith says. “I discovered a broader art community, my community online and started investing there more and sharing there more.”
She had dabbled in this arena before. Years prior, while taking a pottery class, Smith really got into it and began creating pieces and selling them online. “It kind of blew up and became its own thing for a few years while I was still at my job,” she says. “I learned that I really hated the fulfillment side of that. You spend such a small amount of time on creating; the rest is just packaging and mailing.” She told herself that if she ever went back into business selling her art, she’d figure out a way to outsource the order fulfillment side of the process.
Smith, known online by her first and middle names, Mariah Marcia, went into artmaking full-time, working on her painting practice while also developing a kids’ YouTube channel named Artsy With Mariah. “I was disappointed with the quality of art content that was out there for kids—a lot of it was overstimulating,” she says. The channel was a hit with over 30 drawing tutorials for kids to do at home. “That was a very big undertaking, but it’s because of my video production background that I could do that first season by myself,” she says. Although the channel is currently on a break, she intends to pick back up with a little more support for the second season.
By slowly stepping away from her video production work, Smith has been able to dedicate more time to oil painting and developing her business model for selling print reproductions of original paintings. “My style is influenced by the Impressionists—loose, painterly—kind of traditional but has a lightness to it,” she says.
Artist Mariah Smith believes in surrounding yourself with beautiful artwork. Smith’s work, available for purchase on Etsy, includes a variety of subjects ranging from still life to landscapes and portraits.
Smith sells her prints on Etsy, but a big difference in how she operates comes down to the logistics. She doesn’t do any of the order fulfillment herself. Through extensive research, Smith has developed a process she calls the Passive Print Method, and she shares her methodology in an online course of the same name for other artists to use and follow.
“It specifically teaches people who are artists how to digitize it, get it listed on Etsy and get it fulfilled by a third party. It gives artists the freedom to have this stream that continues running without having to put the time in for it,” she says. The Passive Print Method runs without any need for intervention from the artist selling the work and utilizes various listing strategies to optimize exposure on Etsy.
“I did a lot of research on my own and learned the whole process through trial and error. I did it for several years, and I just kept being so shocked that there weren’t that many people talking about it. People are kind of surprised that it’s an option, and they just want the step-by-step of how to do it,” Smith says.
She has an impressive ability to problem solve for her own purposes, but it’s her willingness to develop resources for other artists that is truly unique. By offering transparent information, both through her courses and in videos she shares on Instagram, Smith creates a pathway for people who would otherwise not consider selling their artwork and free up time to dedicate to the actual creative process.
Smith is a mother of three children and notes that oil painting lends itself to life with young kids. “If you’re going to paint in acrylics, the layer is dry in five minutes, so you don’t have time to walk away,” she says. “But I set up my oil paintings, and they stay wet for three to four weeks, so if one of my kids needs me, I can just set my brush down. It just fits a lot better.”
Part of Smith’s philosophy is that surrounding yourself with beautiful artwork should be accessible to everyone. “What I love about the Etsy element is that most people aren’t going to spend hundreds of dollars on an original painting, but they might spend $40 on a print,” she says.
From creating paintings inspired by life alongside her family to developing resources for other artists to build passive income streams through their artwork, Smith has threaded a needle that is beautiful, inspiring and valuable for her family, her customers and her artistic, online community.
Shop Smith’s pieces through her etsy website, etsy.com/shop/mariahmarciaart.
Mariah Marcia
Instagram: @mariah_mpls
