Marvin Cook

Marvin Cook traces his love of painting back to his mother. As a kid, he would watch her draw and sketch. By high school, he was poring over books of landscape paintings and feeling a deep sense of recognition. "That's where I want to be," he remembers thinking. 

Today, his subject is rural North Carolina. Marvin's landscapes invite the viewer to pause and absorb a transient moment in nature, to feel the weather gathering along the shoreline or sunlight warming a stand of trees. He paints plein-air most of the time, standing vigil with his supplies while the water ebbs and flows. "It's an ever-changing thing," he says. "You have to look at the aspects from light to dark and know the properties of it. Because if you're not understanding it, how are you going to capture it?" When a canvas gets too ambitious to finish on location, he carries it back to the studio. But sometimes the work is done right there on the spot.

His clients tend to find him the same way. "I don't see the person as a customer," Marvin says. "I see a person that's curious and wants to see what I'm doing and why." A chat leads to a business card, a QR code, a website visit, maybe a sale. "A lot of relationship building with the customer is happening and I don't really realize it sometimes, because I'm just being me — painting, enjoying my day."

Getting the business off the ground took more capital than Marvin anticipated. As a young entrepreneur, he'd thought he had what he needed — until the costs started adding up. He went looking for funding online and found DreamSpring. He had his doubts, as anyone would. Other lenders had turned him away. He applied anyway. "When I came to DreamSpring, everything worked out," he says. "I went to work straight away."

His $10,675 loan covered art supplies, equipment, a vehicle to transport his work, and the working capital to turn paintings into products — prints, apparel, and home goods that make his art accessible at different price points. Now, whenever he meets another artist or entrepreneur who's struggling to find funding, he doesn't hesitate. "I bring up DreamSpring every single time."

He's looking ahead to organizing outdoor workshops where people can paint together, trading the pressures of the workday for a few hours of focused, restorative attention. Kind of like art therapy. "When I paint, I feel better," he says. "When I'm done, I feel so good."