A lot of people look at my lifestyle and wonder first of all, how I got here, and how on earth I can get things done. I didn’t have this job (as my "day job"), in fact, until I was 35 years old, I didn’t know “artist” was a job! I always drew, painted and wrote. I always had that creative spirit inside of me, and it came out in many ways. It’s poison to keep in… and for me, it just feels good to be creative in any way. I drew on everything - my dresser, light switches, you name it!
I discovered Oil painting when I was 14 through my grandmother Jean. Her husband, my grandfather, made me my first easel. All I had at the time was my bedroom in my parents house. So I set it up there. To this day, I’ve never had an art lesson. My high school didn’t even teach “Art”. It was so foreign to me. Yet when I touched brush to canvas and felt the buttery texture of the oil paint blending into other colours, I was hooked. I experimented, read books, did everything I could to know more. It was my first love, and we’re still together.
There were years I didn’t pick up a brush, but that is because I was travelling and writing, or drawing, sewing, or raising kids and making art out of cakes and sandboxes. But, it was always with me. I had many many many day jobs. Most of them lasted about 6 months. Some were awful, some I liked. But I always painted in the evenings and weekends.
When I was 25 (and a travel agent at that time) I took my mom to the East Coast. We rented a car and drove through the countryside. We passed by a sign that said “Art Studio” along with the artist's name. I turned into the driveway, so curious what that meant. I knocked on the door of a little outbuilding, with the lights on and smoke coming out of a wood stove chimney. It changed my world. I saw paintings on the walls, leaning against each other on the floor and in every space. A man peeked his head out from behind the easel to curiously say “hi?”... I introduced myself and my mom, and asked him, “is this your job?” I really had never even heard of an artist’s studio before! He was, thankfully, so generous with his time and talked to us before we continued on our way… I was changed forever. He gave me some advice: to dive into a series to explore a subject matter that interests me, no matter what it was. Before we left, he gave me his address, so that we could write letters. This was pre-internet, and I wrote to him, and he wrote back with even more advice and stories. I still have that letter.
And so, I had a glimpse of the job that I wanted.
I worked towards it, painting series and doing commissions in a small closet-sized room of an apartment. But soon after, I became pregnant, and life took on a new route for a while. I tried to paint while the kids were young (I stayed home with them in a trailer we lived in, 7 hrs north of Edmonton, while my husband worked at his first job as a pilot, earning minimum wage… life wasn’t easy then, to say the least) Oil paint demands time and energy that I just didn’t have. It was survival mode. But as soon as we moved further south and across the country, things changed. He worked shift-work instead of being gone for weeks on end, and kindergarten started, so I felt I had a bit more time, (on the days that I didn’t work my paying job, which ended up being about one day a week). Plus I was surrounded by another thing I’ve always craved… water.
I carved a little space in the basement for myself, and when I worked “my day job” during the day, I would paint when the kids went to bed and on the weekends when I could. I just craved it more and more. I took a workshop on the west coast that propelled me forward in my development of who I was as an artist. I formed a friendship with the teacher who also became a mentor to me.
Years later, at 35, I was working full-time at a job I liked. One day at work, I thought about the painting on my easel and knew it was time to leap. It wasn’t fair to my job that I wasn’t fully there mentally. I just had this feeling—I was ready. I had also just been accepted into my first gallery, which was incredibly encouraging.
The week I quit, I sold a painting there to a complete stranger. I kept that commission cheque on my fridge for months. It amazed me that someone I didn’t know could connect with my work.
I kept the same work schedule I’d had at my job—just with fewer breaks. From 8 a.m. to 3:30 p.m., while the kids were at school, I painted. Nothing else. I created a sacred, no-distraction time for art, and I was deeply grateful for it. Then came homework, supper, activities, and often painting again after bedtime.
Each day gave me more energy to keep going.
As the kids grew older, time became more abundant, but I never lost that work ethic. I’m thankful for all those day jobs. Some paintings I worked on for weeks and ended up burning, but through all of them, I became who I am. I found my voice.
Financially, it didn’t make sense—but that was never my focus. There’s no forecasting with art, even in the best of times. If I’d waited for things to make traditional “sense,” it never would have happened. My job is strange: I don’t live paycheque to paycheque, I live painting to painting. When a painting sells, I pay my bills and buy more paint.
I’ve never worried much about that. I’ve always focused on quality. Someone once told me, “Quality never goes unnoticed,” and I believe that’s true. Early on, even when it made no financial sense, I burned nearly half of my paintings so I could stay true to the direction I wanted to go as an artist. Rather than focusing on the business side, I focused on making a better painting than the one before—to use this one life to explore my craving to create and bring the paintings inside of me to life… paintings inspired by the nature that surrounds me, where I live and create everyday.
Yes, I hoped sales would pay the bills and allow me to buy more paint and canvases. Some years, neither was possible. I went into the red. But I never quit. I never gave up and chose something else.
Fifteen years later, I’m grateful to pay the bills, buy paint and canvas, and beyond that, to give back. At this stage of my career, my goal in sales—after those basics—is to make my community better with my art, to support local charities, and to make the world around me better in any way that I can.
If you know the job you want—even if it’s just a vague idea—fight for it. You have to work three times as hard as anyone else does to get it and to keep it. You have to create the job out of nothing. To envision something that doesn’t yet exist and trust yourself enough to make it happen, blindly and on your own.
Art is solitary. Luckily, I have my ideas—too many to paint in a lifetime. But that means searching, pushing yourself, showing up for those ideas, honouring them, and weaving them into your daily life. Making something out of nothing, over and over again.
There are parts of the “business” that have been difficult for me, but I’ve had to learn them too. Now, I live in a rhythm where all of this is ingrained, and my days unfold naturally around who I am and what I do.
The goal in life is to shed the layers of what you think you should do, what society expects of you, and who you’re supposed to be in order to fit in—and to emerge as yourself.
At 50, I’m finally in that mental space. But I’m still experimenting, still pushing myself. To stop learning and trying new things is fatal to the spirit. You have one life, and it moves faster the older you get.
My advice to anyone not aligned with how they want to spend their time: find yourself. Find your voice, and what only you want to create. Push yourself harder than you ever have and make it happen. Find the time—even if that means eating a little less, selling things you don’t need, calling in sick for social occasions or skipping vacations for a while.
If there’s a will, there is a way. If you have the craving to create, go for it. If you want to build a job that doesn’t yet exist, but it’s how you want to live this one precious life, put everything you have into it.
It’s not easy—but it’s always worth it.