I moved to Raleigh to work for Habitat for Humanity, and met my husband, JD Shannon. Since we were starting over in an empty house, and he had an inkling of my artistic interests, he bought me some canvas and paint. It became incredibly therapeutic as I gave up “happy hours,” and, amazingly, people wanted to buy even the early paintings. After awhile, it appeared I might have a potential business, so my husband became my patron. He underwrote a public studio and I was off and running.

I had no idea in 2002, the “painting a few things for our empty walls” would become my new career. But it turned out even better than I could have imagined. And two decades later, even though I am now mostly “retired,” I still paint, because people still ask me to! If that isn’t a blessing, I don’t know what is.

My downtown Raleigh studio, in the Warehouse District, at 311 West Martin Street, put me in the middle of the growing Raleigh art scene, and that gave me the opportunity to grow my skills, develop collectors — and finally find my voice. They tell writers to “write what you know,” so, as a lifelong traveler, I decided to “paint what I knew:” the great cities of the world. I didn’t try to paint them accurately, but, instead painted what I “sensed” of them. It worked.

After jurying in to several prestigious road shows, I took my work more and more to Fine Art Shows around the US. As I did, I was commissioned to paint more and more cities, and I found more and more collectors. I painted hundreds of paintings and mixed media pieces and talked to tens of thousands of people over a fifteen year period “on the road.” It bought lots of groceries and allowed me to find out what people wanted to hang on their walls. A painting is a serious investment, and it’s also something you look at on a daily basis. People often know what they want.

The biggest surprise for me in showing my work in my gallery, solo shows, and on the road, was how much people enjoyed art, and how wide-ranging were their tastes. It was a revelation. And over the years, it became my little mission, to make people smile. I wasn’t going to hang in the Louvre, but I knew I was already hanging in hundreds of homes in America and around the world.

This is what a typical weekend “gallery on the road” looked like. Those are “portable walls” but I got a workout. Over the years, I worked up to 22 shows a year, from Houston to Miami, and from Oklahoma City to Maine. It was the most fun I never expected, from painting!

I won awards, got interviewed by TV stations, saw my work on giant billboards, shipped it to “invitation only” exhibitions across the country, and raised money for charities painting on everything from guitars to ballet slippers.

In the meantime, though, I still had the Raleigh studio, and eventually I bought the gallery it was in. So I had the opportunity to show the work of other incredible local artists.

Retired….sort of

My high school art teacher told me “it’s hard to make a living with art.” It is. But it’s also rewarding on so many levels. Thank you all!