We recently connected with Abby Roemer and have shared our conversation below.
Abby, appreciate you joining us today. We’d love to hear about when you first realized that you wanted to pursue a creative path professionally.
For most of my life I felt no contentment in answering the question “what do you want to be when you grow up?”. In fact, I dreaded the inquiry. Despite enjoying art since I can remember, and it being my favorite class particularly throughout high school where I received affirming feedback from peers and my teacher (at one point even being commissioned by a non-art teacher to do a piece), I couldn’t envision how I would do art for a career. My high school art teacher, Mindy Duncan, is an exceptional artist, teacher and human who I idolize to this day. Looking back, it’s possible I encountered most artists as also my teachers or unrelatable prodigies, and combined this observation with the societal messaging of “starving artist”, along with learning about artists whose work wasn’t valued until they were dead, to conclude that to be solely an artist is to have no financial security. That said, I struggled to see myself in any particular career role and certainly not as a teacher; not after experiencing crippling stage-fright that only seemed to intensify throughout my school years. I had talent involving athleticism, but as much as I loved playing for my teams and soccer in general, I knew my passion fell-short for pursuing it to a career level.
Thus, I entered college undecided. I signed up for a variety of courses on a quest to discover a direction. I also continued with art classes, many of which became favorites. But of course, I couldn’t major in something that was destined to lead me to struggle. When the time came to decide it turned out I had completed all the prerequisite art classes and through them had a portfolio to apply to the interior architecture program. I thought “maybe this is it, *practical*-meets-creative”. To my surprise, I was accepted, and thus began a three-year journey of realizing this wasn’t the field I’m meant to be in. It wasn’t regrettable, as I learned plenty that I still find applicable in my life to this day, and it was my internship experience in Denver that got me confident in knowing at least where I wanted to be when I graduated from Ohio University in 2010.
Upon moving to Colorado I continued working, albeit briefly, in the realm of interior design. For a time I supplemented my income with nannying until taking an opportunity to go a whole new direction all-together: the restaurant industry. This led to an incredible amount of personal growth over 10+ years. This path afforded me an outdoor recreational lifestyle that I loved, friendships, and to pay for multiple yoga teacher trainings in pursuit of deepening my practice but ultimately, to my surprise, a desire to teach. My restaurant industry journey from hostess, to server and bartender was rife with stage-fright struggles that I worked to overcome to a functional and successful degree, at least in this context. I learned I could do it again if I wanted to, and I did. I reached a point of teaching 8 classes a week and working 4 restaurant shifts. Despite all the positives through these experiences, I also reached a point of realization that “this isn’t quite it, either”. It’s as though I felt a familiar cap on my drive to take either beyond a certain extent career-wise.
All this time, over all these years, the urge to create would come to me and move through me. During 2020, I was granted extra time and with it I actually created more than I had in years. I was surprised by what came through since I hadn’t been been consistent for so long. I also realized the more I created it seemed the more I craved it. At this point I had begun to investigate my mindset around what’s possible for my art. What were my beliefs around being an artist and what were my beliefs about myself? Once I began this process I was shifting my thinking and then also asking myself “What if I reduced time in my current work and gave that time to treat painting like a job? Would I show up? Would my drive fall-short?” I decided to try and find out. I ended up sharing what I was working on on my social media, and received interest in buying a piece before I’d even finished. It caught me off guard such that I hadn’t thought about how to price my art! This was exhilarating and also spurred a revelation around my own mindset on valuing art and myself. The first person that came to mind to ask for help was none-other than my high school art teacher.. It was an amazing feeling to realize I was showing up, consistently, and as a result I had people wanting to buy what I was doing. This ultimately lent itself to a process of overriding self-doubt and forging a new mindset around doing art as a career.
Fast forward to the summer of 2021, I signed up to help an artist friend (at the time an acquaintance through a yoga studio) to do one of her outdoor art festivals in Dillon, CO. This was a conscious next-step effort to take action toward gaining insight on how one self-employed career artist is going about it. It was during this event that I fluttered around and then like a moth drawn to a light entered the booth of, unbeknownst to me at the time, a legendary contemporary-southwestern artist known as Amado Pena Jr. I was absolutely lit-up like a kid in a candy store of colorful, complex and energetically potent paintings. He happened to be present and I had questions. He stood up from his working table and chair in the shade to join me in the booth, standing in front of his work pointing and touching it as he explained things to me thoughtfully, passionately and clearly. Shortly thereafter I came to learn that his assistant at the time had been his art student when he was teaching in Texas many years ago. This seemed to make sense of the interaction feeling so familiar to and appreciated by me; perhaps it came from subtle parallels that related to Mrs. Duncan’s teacher-spirit. The show lasted three days and I made my way to spend time at Mr Pena’s booth whenever I could. By the end I’d shown him some of my work on my phone. I vaguely recall him remarking on what he found strong and interesting. It was a good feeling; something of reassurance. I couldn’t believe how inspiring my first experiential endeavor in an artist-career setting turned out to be. It began to feel quite auspicious Creating art is as much of a spiritual experience as it has become a business for me. Painting (acrylic) has been my main medium and I draw inspiration most often from engaging with the natural environment, souls of animals and at times from strong emotional experiences. I love to explore what’s possible in evoking the senses or feelings through what I paint (content, composition) and how I paint it (colors, textures, different brush strokes). In other words I desire to offer an experience through it; whether for the imagination, the heart, etc. Even though it matters to satisfy my own sensibilities with what I’m making I try to maintain a separation between what is created and my ego, Therein lies a spiritual component which involves remaining unattached; because in my spiritual perspective, it’s a collaboration with mysterious forces and it’s not about me. I intend to serve something of a greater purpose through this gift-meets-devotion to painting. I’ve only just entered my artist career journey and look forward to all that is yet to be learned, discovered and to unfold. It’s challenging to convey in words the array of mental, physical, emotional, financial, logistical, marketing etc. aspects of being a self-employed creative. Ultimately I think it’s helpful for us all to remember there is always a “behind the scenes” for what is packaged and presented to us in various contexts (i.e. a film, a plate of food, a painting) . I have observed non-creatives romanticizing the artist-career but as much as I don’t care to burst bubbles I also don’t care to feed any under-valuing of what it takes to make and sell art. So far, my experience has felt like pure hustle. It’s a hustle I’m choosing because I have faith that it’s worthwhile and have a determination to find stability on the other end. It’s certainly not guaranteed, which is unsettling. I’ve come a long way from avoiding it for fear of being a “starving artist” to embracing the sacrifices for a possibility of arriving at the feast one day. It can look to others on the outside as though “I’ve made it” because I’m doing art shows and showing at a gallery but these are currently efforts as opposed to evidence. Encouragement is always appreciated! I think it’s helpful for society to be able to make the distinction between corporate mass-production of art/creative products and those by independent artist/creatives. It’s important to consider the one-of-a-kind hearts, souls, and devoted skillfulness that individuals put into making things for us to use, enjoy, be inspired by, etc., and the financial investment differences between individuals and corporations to inform how we value artist/creative work and choose to use our dollars. When people invest in artists and creatives they’re pumping blood into the beating heart of society. Contact Info:
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Only a couple months passed before I received a call from Mr Pena. He was reaching out to see if I had any interest in an opportunity to work directly with him, assisting in a similar capacity to who I’d met at the show, doing various art festivals and potentially moving to Santa Fe which would include helping with the gallery. His offer involved an overall mentorship/artist-in-residence type of arrangement. Thankfully my amazing restaurant bosses at the time, owners of Restaurant Olivia in Denver, CO supported me in being able to schedule various chunks of time away to try-out working at the art festivals. One of these shows was in St. George, UT and it was my first time showing art in this setting. Amado invited me to put up a few pieces on a panel in his booth. At some point a group of show-officals came to the tent holding clip-boards and pointed at a piece above my head and said something along the lines of “we’re with the St. George Art Museum and we want to purchase that piece for our collection”. I was stunned to realize they were pointing at an abstract mountain landscape piece I started in 2018 and finished during 2020 Covid shut-down. Overall, it just felt insane that I was sharing a booth with an incredible, long-revered artist that I met at my first art show-going, and now this was happening thanks to the opportunity from said artist at my first art-show-showing in less than a year later. Another feeling of reassurance occurred that fortified a clearer sense that I’m supposed to be and want to be on this path. As of summer of 2022 at age 35, it was decided that I would officially make a complete shift to Santa Fe, NM and be a full-time artist and artist-assistant to Amado Pena Jr. <<
Abby, 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?
Do you think there is something that non-creatives might struggle to understand about your journey as a creative? Maybe you can shed some light?
How can we best help foster a strong, supportive environment for artists and creatives?
