Blog

Like me, many of the artists I know started their careers elsewhere and eventually found their way back to art, their first and lasting passion. For most, this is a practical consideration -- the need to find a regular, salaried job. For many, it is also a matter of a lack of information, imagination, and daring.  This was true for me.  Much as I could not be happy not painting, I also simply could not picture, as a young college student, what a creative working life would look like, or how it would even be feasible. There were no models for "professional artist" in my world.  It just wasn't a thing.  Although my parents encouraged me to study whatever interested me at an excellent liberal arts school, I still somehow absorbed the message that academic, rather than fine art study, was more worthy of my time.  So I went on to earn a Ph.D. in English, sneaking in a painting whenever I had the time--including every vacation, school break, and later on, Mother's Day.  

As it turns out, I eventually discovered that it is possible to make a living making art.  I never stopped painting, and lucky for me, my first chosen career was heavy on prestige but light on actual pay, which gave me the relative freedom to supplement and replace my meager income with an (at first) equally meager one.  I began teaching community art classes, and then private classes in my home.  That, combined with commissioned portraits, and gradually gallery work, began to provide a fulltime income.

           Jeanne in her Classroom Studio

For me, it was a gradual career shift over about a decade, and I've built up my art business over another decade.  Finally working fulltime as a professional artist, I feel as if someone switched my life from black and white to color.  Now that I'm living in color, I really do appreciate it every day.  This is a job I will never retire from.  I have always known that I get grumpy if I go too long without painting.  Painting is what I would do choose to do on my day off...if there were such a thing.      

I'm writing this blog to share my new work, my class demos, and also to share my life as a working artist.  Hope you'll come along for the ride, and I welcome your questions, suggestions and responses.