Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Kristen Hess. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Kristen, appreciate you joining us today. We’d love to hear about a project that you’ve worked on that’s meant a lot to you.

In recent years, I have started doing live event paintings, mostly at weddings, but also for fundraisers or other occasions. This year I was invited to paint at a women of influence retreat hosted by my church. The girls in the church came with their moms, grandmothers, or mentors to enjoy a weekend to connect and grow together. The whole weekend had a creative flare to it, with a collaborative painting activity, and a time of worship led by one of the youth girls, her mother and grandmother.

I painted while the pastor’s wife taught about unexpected events happening in Israel’s history, and the tendency to not be able to see God’s purposes. Over one hundred times, the Bible describes God as the potter and us at the clay he is molding and shaping. The imagery is meant to be a comfort when we cannot see God’s end vision for everything that happens to us, and also a reminder that he is the Creator and we are the creation.

With such tangible visuals, I knew I had to paint a potter’s hands shaping a vessel on a wheel. I painted on a 30×30 canvas using a limited palette of yellow ochre, permanent rose, cadmium red, ultramarine blue, raw umber and titanium white. My goal was to create a dark, moody piece with strong light accentuating the potter’s purposeful hands. His hands are firm, steadfast, intentional, but at the same time gentle as he shapes the wet clay. His hands are textured with rough and cracked dried clay and his fingers are caked in wet clay, each adding a level of interest and variation in surfaces. The parts of the hands facing toward the light are earthy, terra cotta colors, while the planes of the hands facing away from the light source have reflected light of purples and violets.

As I painted, I talked to many of the girls about their love of the arts, further invigorating my inspiration. Being in school, the girls have so many opportunities to learn and explore the arts that many adults I normally interact with do not have anymore. It was exciting to be around so many who loved the arts! Art programs all over Little Rock have grown, planting the seeds for a future career using the arts in many young people. I was thankful to be a real life example of what an artist by profession could look like. My story is that I am self-taught, but through my life have had a handful of influential mentors and artists who have shared their craft with me. I hope to get to keep investing in the growth of other young artists (or not-so-young! It’s never too late to start!).

This piece was particularly meaningful and vulnerable for me because I was asked to share about it – in verbal words, not just social media captions! Most of my work simply reflects the beauty I see in the world. This piece for me, however, struck a deeper cord when attached to the message of the weekend of dealing with disappointment, loss, frustration, hurt. It forced me to confront the question, “Who am I to question my Maker?” In 2019, I miscarried our first baby, followed by all the emotions and questions and grief expected after a loss. We all deal with unwelcome and unexpected events in our lives, but will we trust God with it? I am short-sighted and can barely predict what the rest of this year holds, much less control or orchestrate it. To me, this painting reminds me that God is above it all, and his sure and steady hands are taking care of me. Sometimes to get the shape he wants, he just has to apply a little pressure.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

As a child, I became obsessed with drawing on every piece of scrap paper, napkin or notebook I could get my hands on. Eventually my influential high school art teacher introduced me to oil paints, and I was hooked! She is the one who helped me believe I could actually make a career out of painting, and she is still a close friend now. Going from grayscale to color opened a whole new world for me, so I took workshops, learned from local artists, and by trial and error started to develop a style. I love the impressionists’ take on light and color, so I began to make that a focus in my work, whether it was painting how the light affects different textures in nature in a landscape, or the subtleties of light creating lines and expression on faces.

I began selling my work in high school, and painted late into the nights while in college at Ouachita Baptist University. I was surrounded by a great network of generous people who saw my potential, took a chance and paid me for the things I was creating. After graduating I lived overseas for a time, where I was able to teach a few painting workshops alongside my other job, growing a love for seeing people surprise themselves with what they could create.

When I returned in 2014, I started grad school at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, where I met my husband. I finished my masters in December 2016, got married a few weeks later, and came back to Fort Worth finally as a full time artist! Since then, my web and social media presence has grown, and I have more time to invest in the entrepreneurial side of art.

I haven’t found a subject I don’t like to paint in the right light and color palette, but I am particularly known for my portraits. I love capturing faces, especially the subtle expression in eyes. When I consult with collectors about their commissioned piece (typically parents or grandparents wanting portraits of their kids), I describe the type of intimate moment I seek to capture. Most parents know the feeling of looking onto their kids playing and wanting to remember that forever. In my portraits, I want the people to be candid and naturally interacting with each other, acting as if the viewer is just a fly on the wall peeping into their world. This type of portrait tells a story, and I love leaving my collectors with their happy memories.

Are there any resources you wish you knew about earlier in your creative journey?

I wish I had better access to courses teaching how to bring paintings into the digital world. Even if my paintings are phenomenal in person, I become so limited if I cannot get a true to life, professional image of my work. Experiencing art firsthand is irreplaceable, but viewing art on a screen has become crucial to galleries, collectors, juried shows, and so many aspects of the fine arts now. A lot of products seem overwhelming to piece-meal teach myself, so I would have appreciated some shortcuts in learning to photograph my work, crop and retouch it in adobe or other programs, and learn about resolution size and file types.

We often hear about learning lessons – but just as important is unlearning lessons. Have you ever had to unlearn a lesson?

Before I started oil painting, I stuck to graphite, charcoal, and pen and ink. I loved to draw and would get quite detailed, borderline perfectionist. The level of detail was a tough habit to break with a big paintbrush in my hand instead of a pencil! I knew I wanted to paint loosely, so I had to unlearn my perfectionist tendencies on a couple levels. In the beginning I would get frustrated because I could see in my references all the detail, but my brush could not paint everything my eyes were seeing. I constantly got caught up in the details, so a mentor challenged me to time myself through the stages of the painting. I would give myself five minutes to sketch the composition, another 5-10 to cover the whole canvas in values, and then develop the painting from there. Learning to paint quick and loose has helped me paint impressions of what I see, whether in the studio, at an event, or plein air as the light changes.

Breaking my perfectionism also helped my colors. Many new painters have trouble keeping vibrant colors, finding their painting looking muddy. Basically the lesson here is “Make a stroke and leave it.” It took courage to be so bold, and I fought against every thought that something was a little off and that I should keep working on it. Colors get muddy when you keep painting the same spot over and over again. Oils dry slowly, so applying we paint on wet paint with pressure will blend the two together, losing the color you worked so hard to mix onto your brush. Refraining myself from overworking the canvas was huge in taking my work to the next level.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://kristenhessart.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kristenhessart/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/kristenhessart/