We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Amy Steinberg a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Amy, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Can you take us back in time to the first dollar you earned as a creative – how did it happen? What’s the story?

My first dollar I sold

Back in 2002 I started doing art because my therapist suggested it. I walked into a small local art store and asked if they had paste like when I was in kindergarten. The guy chuckled and was nice enough to show me different glue options, a few paint brushes and I picked a couple liquitex acrylics. After that I cut magazines, melted crayons and glued stuff to just about any surface I could. I was so excited that “I’d made that”, I started looking for places to sell. There was a brand new outdoor European style shopping mall in San Jose called Santana Row and it seemed like the perfect place to have outdoor artists painting and selling. So I sent an email to the only email address I could dig up and pitched my idea. It took a couple of weeks but to make a long story short I got to set up my easel and some paintings in the promenade by the outdoor wine bar. I painted several Eiffel towers, a piece with Big Ben and another piece of bright burnt oranges and pinks with collaged Mozart music and a tulip tree.

My first day out I was super nervous but painted, answered questions and called myself an artist. A tall blonde lady with short hair, two kids and her husband stopped by to ask questions and she really liked the tulip tree but it was $600 and she wanted to think about it. They sat down about 20 feet away in an outdoor cafe, I could see them looking and gesturing at the painting and I was so nervous. After they finished their lunch the lady got up, came over and bought that painting. It was all I could do to contain myself but we hugged and I said thank you profusely. That was the first dollar I ever made from my art. Over the years I’ve ran into her twice and she always remembers me and tells me that it’s still her favorite painting and it hangs over their stairs where the sun hits it in the afternoon and she says it looks like “fire”.

Amy, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

I was actually the CEO of a high tech start up and then a VP of Technical Services at another startup when my therapist suggested I try doing some art. I couldn’t draw a tick figure to save my life and didn’t know the first thing about painting but I did remember how it felt in kindergarten, the small of glue and the feeling of joy from creating.

I took those memories and threw myself at creating large collage paintings, small vignettes and many series based on places I had traveled like Paris, London, Athens, etc. The Internet didn’t have art classes at the time and so I taught myself. I would visit museums and galleries and study the brush strokes of other artists, read as many books as I could get my hands on and experiment, experiment, experiment. I tried everything from intricate collage to encaustic to large mixed media works. Anything was fair game and because I didn’t know that I “couldn’t” I tried everything.

I’m probably most proud that up until 5 years ago I was completely self taught. It was then that I met another artist named Amy B Steinberg (who happens to live near me) and she introduced me to my mentor and teacher Ardith Goodwin. With Ardith’s tutelage I think I’ve grown considerably and my goal with my art is to provide people with something beautiful and interesting. I work hard to always experiment and try to remember my roots of experimentation and anything goes. For the last two years I’ve practiced diligently at getting flowers to be recognizable as flowers but not exact replicas. I want my flowers to be layered, interesting and have a sense of depth to them that is beautiful. While it’s important to sell my work, I’m very focused on working the flower abstraction until it matches precisely the vision in my head. Each time I sit down to work I strive to make progress towards that end.

We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.

In 2017 I was diagnosed with breast cancer. I was lucky in that it was very early and all I needed as a double mastectomy. I say, “all I needed” with a bit of tongue and cheek because a double mastectomy is really nothing to sneeze at. I just feel I was lucky that I didn’t need chemotherapy or radiation treatment like so many other men and women.

Having a double mastectomy has really taught me that my art and the work I do around my creativity is the most important thing I will do in this lifetime outside of raising my daughter. I’m much more diligent and careful with my creativity, I think about it more as a craft that requires practice than I did before.

What’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative in your experience?

The moment to moment wonder and intellectual questions I get from making art. Sitting down and solving the puzzle of any piece is so interesting. You have to think about everything, size, composition, colors, values, drama, subject matter, form and on and on. It’s an intellectual conundrum at every turn. So finishing a piece after solving the puzzle is the most rewarding.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.amysteinberg.com
• Instagram: @amysteinberg
• Facebook: @amy.steinberg
• Twitter: @amysteinberg

Image Credits
Amy Steinberg