Some artists arrive at their calling in a studio. Christina Hohenwarter found hers on a bicycle.

In 2017, she set off on a months-long cycling trip through Southern Europe. What started as an escape from “the system” became the thing that now anchors everything she makes: a sense of freedom. Later travels took her backpacking as far as Colombia, where the landscapes and craft traditions captivated her, and where, with paints tucked into her backpack, she began capturing the world around her.

For years before that, Christina had followed a steadier path as an occupational therapist specializing in art-therapeutic elements. Eventually she left her clinical career to give herself fully to her work as a professional artist and designer. Today she paints from the Palatinate Forest of Southern Germany, translating the calm and harmony she finds in nature into a minimalist painterly language of organic, transparent layers and earthy, green tones. Her originals and prints reach collectors worldwide, and her work has been shown internationally, including in Madrid.

But the part of her business that Paid Memberships Pro helped bring to life is newer, and in some ways the most personal.

From Sharing Her Work to Teaching It

Christina began posting her paintings on social media in 2022. The response came quickly: local exhibitions, then a growing online shop for her original work. Along the way she noticed something she had not gone looking for. Other creatives were drawn to her particular style and her techniques with acrylic inks, and the requests for tutorials kept coming.

By 2024, the demand was, in her words, impossible to ignore. So she set about building a comprehensive membership course, which she launched in April 2025. The shift into teaching turned out to be a turning point for the whole business, bringing a new consistency and a new kind of growth.

She did not want to teach through anyone else’s platform, though. And that is where her search began.

Building on Ground She Didn’t Own

Christina’s first instinct was the obvious one: host the course on an established external teaching platform. But the math gave her pause. As a creator without a dedicated course budget, the high monthly fees felt like a real risk, especially while she was still testing whether the demand for her tutorials was as strong as it seemed.

The cost was only part of it. The deeper problem was ownership.

It didn’t feel right to build my community on a platform I didn’t truly own.

She did not want to hand over control of her brand or her students’ experience to a third party. For an artist whose entire practice is about authenticity and connection, building her community somewhere she didn’t control was a compromise she wasn’t willing to make.

Why a Membership, and Why PMPro

Christina chose a membership model deliberately, because she believes ongoing support and feedback are essential in painting. Creativity doesn’t follow strict rules, and she wanted a format that let her stay with her students for the long term, guiding them as they developed their own style and building a creative community where everyone grows together.

She was not new to WordPress, or to the trade-offs between platforms. When she first researched web design in 2021, WordPress stood out as the option with the most room to grow. She has since built sites for other artists and handled redesigns on Wix and Squarespace, so she has seen the differences firsthand. WordPress asks more of a beginner, but its flexibility is exactly what a growing business needs.

When she went looking for the right membership tool, she did her homework, researching WordPress membership plugins and watching in-depth reviews from experienced developers to see how each one held up in the real world. Paid Memberships Pro stood out for a reason that mattered to a growing business:

It didn’t force me into a “one-size-fits-all” box; it gave me a platform that was as flexible and scalable as my own artistic process.

Unlike plugins that asked for a large investment before she had made her first sale, PMPro’s modular approach let her start with exactly what she needed and add more as the membership grew.

Setup, she admits, surprised her:

I was pleasantly surprised by how intuitive the initial setup was.

She had braced for a steep climb. Instead, ready-made templates and pages gave her a membership structure she could customize to her brand and get off the ground far faster than she expected. Launching quickly gave her the momentum to focus on what actually mattered to her: her students and her art.

One Place for Everything

The biggest thing PMPro solved was fragmentation. It let Christina bring her gallery, her shop, and her courses together in a single place she owns: her own website.

That changed the economics and the experience at once. Instead of sending her audience off to a third-party site and losing the traffic, she now invites them deeper into her own world. The result is not just a tidier workflow but a stronger connection, with members staying engaged with her work from the first painting to the last lesson.

Running everything herself has stayed manageable because the system makes sense to her. She appreciates that the backend is logical rather than a “black box,” so she can manage memberships and content without a large technical team behind her. Members, meanwhile, get a single professional dashboard where they can handle their account and reach their lessons.

The control PMPro gives her over content has also reshaped how she works. Over one recent holiday season she designed a Five-Day Painting Challenge for her students, built the entire series in advance, and kept each lesson hidden until its moment. Then, while she was away with her family, she released each day’s tutorial with a single click. She stayed present for her community and kept delivering value without giving up her own time.

Engagement, Stability, and a Community That Sticks

Since launching on PMPro, Christina has seen a clear rise in engagement, especially in how members interact with her content. Students spend more time on the platform, streaming the tutorials and revisiting lessons as often as they need. That self-paced flexibility matters in painting, where mastering a technique before moving on is the whole point.

For Christina, the proof is simple:

Seeing my members return to the site repeatedly to refine their skills is the best metric of success I could ask for.

There has been a quieter result too. The membership brought the consistent income she needs to maintain her studio, and with it a real peace of mind. That stability also lets her work the way she works best, in harmony with her surroundings. When the light is right, she gives the day to painting, filming, and photography, and saves the administrative and technical work for rainy days and evenings.

The most unexpected reward, she says, has been the depth of the community itself. Her members are supportive and invested, and they stayed with her even in the early days when things were not perfectly polished, growing right alongside her.

That care has extended to the people behind the plugin, too. When she ran into a snag after a recent update, PMPro’s support team gave her a clear, concise fix that solved the problem right away. For someone handling the technical side of the business on her own, that kind of reliable help matters.

What’s Next

Christina’s vision is for her international art community to keep growing, with even more countries represented and more collaboration with interior designers alongside her original collections. On her wish list for PMPro is a built-in real-time community chat, a dedicated space where students could share breakthroughs and ask quick questions in the moment, making the membership feel even more like a studio where people meet and talk.

Her advice for other creatives thinking about starting is refreshingly direct: make a plan, think about how and where you want to reach people, and then just start. She likes a line she once heard:

If you don’t feel a bit ashamed of what you shared in the beginning, you probably started too late.

She was surprised to find that members don’t care about perfection. They want to be inspired, and they want you, your knowledge, and your experiences.

Especially now in the age of AI, the personal touch of a membership is key. Be authentic and simply show up.

Ready to build your membership on a platform you actually own? Get started with Paid Memberships Pro.