Meet Chris Lewis | Illustrator and Owner of BARITUS

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

Hi Chris, we’d love to hear more about how you thought about starting your own business?
I have always been first and foremost an artist, and that is what has generally inspired me to keep creating and pushing what I can do with the art I create. I’ve also been very driven about my work, and I knew at a young age that I wanted to be free to pursue the creative endeavors that really inspired me. However there wasn’t an obvious clear path for how or what I wanted to do early on, until I spent a number of years working in marketing departments as a graphic designer. It was there that I picked up a wide range of skills in the apparel and convenience retail industries that helped me see how I could use my art as the foundation for a brand of apparel and print products. So while I took a long route to get to where I am, all of those experiences really helped pave the way for me, and once those experiences converged with my creativity, it opened up a clear direction that I knew I had to pursue.

Let’s talk shop? Tell us more about your career, what can you share with our community?
I’ve been an artist my entire life, so for as far back as I could remember there were always significant parts of my time spent at a desk lost in a world of creative imagination, making ideas come to life on paper in various ways. When it came time to put the skills I developed to work in a career, I wasn’t really sure where I could get a foot in when it came to illustration, which was always my first love. But at that time it seemed everyone was hiring graphic designers, and so I kicked off my career working in the athletic apparel industry, where I picked up all kinds of skills that one can only learn on the job and hitting the ground facing various design projects and challenges. I gained experience there in things like apparel design, packaging, print production, environmental design, branding, photoshoots, really the entire creative gamut, We were a small team, and we did everything. I also found I was able to exercise a lot of my illustration skills in that job, and so had a lot of fun bringing both illustration and graphic design skills into my work. This continued when I eventually landed a job in a convenience retail company, working again as a graphic designer in the Marketing department. Those same skills I had been developing, continued to grow exponentially there as this was a company that liked to try new things, take risks and was constantly evolving and experimenting in order to set themselves apart from the competition and lead the industry they were in. For a graphic designer, this was a lot of fun as the day to day could be so different when it came to the types of work I was doing. After 17 years between these two companies, while also doing quite a bit of freelance work, I came to a point where the most important things in my life, faith and family, started to shape my priorities in a different way. I looked at all of the experience I had gained working in graphic design, and I saw an opportunity to apply these things to a niche market within the Catholic world. I had begun in the years leading up to starting my company, to dive back into my love for illustration, when I’d come home from work at nights in my spare time. I began experimenting with the Catholic themes and subjects, as this was an outlet I didn’t have anywhere else in my life at the time. As I started to really fall back in love with drawing again in this way, and so I wondered if the types of branding, products and experience I had worked so much on in the corporate world, could be applied to a small Catholic business, producing apparel, devotional goods, and decor. I took a chance with a small line of products, and began a shop in my spare time. Within a couple of years I could see a feasible leap to branching out full time in this endeavor, knowing that if I committed all of my time to my personal brand, I could build something potentially viable full time. I made that leap in 2020, and never looked back!

If you had a friend visiting you, what are some of the local spots you’d want to take them around to?
I’ve always liked visiting the more quiet and reflective places around the city, museums and small towns particularly. In my experience the museums provide the most reflective creative experiences and inspiration for me, while the small towns can be a fun getaway to get a taste of authentic culture in the areas we live. This is also a great way to see the different little hideaway places that are still full of character and charm and have not been rep[laced by what has often become corporate big box sameness everywhere. I don’t need much but If I can find a restaurant in a small getaway town or city, with an outdoor patio on a nice day, I’m happy.

Who else deserves some credit and recognition?
There are so many people who have crossed my path in life and have been influential in the development of my talents, that it’s nearly impossible to pick one. But the person who has been a constant, and always backed me up with whatever I decided to do in my career, or with starting a business has been my wife, Natalie. Since the earliest days she has always encouraged me to keep pursuing my artistic talents, and sometimes this came with a sacrifice, and yet she always backed me up and was the one person I could rely on for support, encouragement, and motivation when it came time to take a leap and start my own business, and she was significant in those early days of helping to pick up a lot of that workload so we could do this together.

Website: https://barituscatholic.com

Instagram: @barituscatholic

Youtube: @barituscatholic

Other: Official Shop: barituscatholic.etsy.com