We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Anne Kupillas a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Anne, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today So let’s jump to your mission – what’s the backstory behind how you developed the mission that drives your brand?
I truly believe that art is for everyone! On the one hand, I mean I believe that art should be affordable and relatable. And on the other hand, what I mean is that anyone who wants to create art CAN and should do it! As a teacher, it’s so important to me to encourage my students especially as they are beginning their art journey and trying to master techniques and searching to find their own unique style and voice. So many of my students tell me that they were not only not encouraged to paint, but were actively discouraged! I find this so sad, because there’s no mystery to talent when it comes to painting. True, there are some lucky special folks who are born with an innate ability to create art — but without any training or practice, nothing more will come of it. There is a myth that great artists are born, and that we don’t need to practice. But this is counterintuitive — you would never think that a dancer, or a musician, or any other performing artist doesn’t need to practice, to hone their craft and learn different techniques and just plain improve on what they have seen or learned. But with art, I hear this over and over. I actively work to dispel this fallacy by encouraging my students to work hard, to look critically but kindly at their own works and to keep going until they find their voices. I do often hear my students say, You’re too kind — but I’m not being kind, I speak the truth. I point out what’s positive. in their painting and I go easy on what needs more work. Because watercolor painting is hard! And everyone deserves to enjoy expressing themselves and feeling good about it. Just like I don’t think you need to have a terrific voice to enjoy singing (I sing all day, in the car, the shower, wherever!), I don’t think you need any special talent to make art and feel the catharsis of doing so. And take some classes – you’ll improve.
Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.
For those of you who don’t know me, I’m a Long Beach-based fine artist working primarily in watercolor. I love everything about the medium and decided to go “all-in” on it about five years ago. I took classes as a young adult but then I didn’t really do art for a long time. I was a vacation artist – two weeks per year, I’d break out my little travel watercolor set and sketch on location wherever I traveled, both alone and with friends and family. Occasionally, I’d take a class or have a small showcase but I never had designs on doing art full-time — well that’s not really true. Truth is, I always thought I would be 70 and retired before I could paint on a daily basis. Wearing a mumu, with several cats and living my dream!
That all changed in 2017, when I contracted Lyme disease and it went undiagnosed for almost two years. I became sicker and sicker and couldn’t work. My doctor recommended I take up a hobby to take my mind of my symptoms, and I picked up my travel watercolor set again. I finally got diagnosed and into treatment, and as my health improved, I became more keen to get good at watercolors, and to understand the medium, I read a lot of books and watched a lot of videos about it on YouTube. This coincided with the start of the pandemic, so it was perfect! I wasn’t going back to work — no one was — and I started to host a weekly Watercolor Happy Hour on Zoom with a few art friends. Then I started to teach the senior program at Cal State Long Beach and many of those students joined my happy hour zooms. I’m approaching 200 weeks of Zooms and love the community I have built on these free Zoom hours.
During the pandemic, I did some street fairs and also sketched outside again. Some of the students asked me to bring them out and so I began hosting half day workshops en plein air (painting outdoors, with your subject in front of you). I started Eat Paint Live art retreats as a way to bring artists together and help them gain skill and confidence with their outdoor painting. With Eat Paint Live, I have hosted art retreats in The Cotswolds, and in Ojai, Catalina Island, and the Eastern Sierras. I coordinate all the locations, the art supplies, guest artists and learning about the tradition of local arts, as well as arranging all the meals and sometimes the travel and lodging (each retreat is slightly different in those respects). I think the retreats fulfill my desire to be a hostess in some way!
In 2023, I joined the board of a local plein air group, SOCALPAPA and I co-chaired a week long festival at the Newport Back Bay. This year, I’ve taken on a larger role as their head of advertising and promotion. It’s brought me a whole new set of professional artist friends and colleagues and the opportunity to showcase my landscape artwork in group and solo shows here in Southern California. I have many interests and love painting different subjects, but landscapes are my favorite as I seem to keep gravitating back to them.
This year, I’m excited to take a short hiatus from commissions and from teaching at the college, to have more time to hone my skills and to explore the subject matter I want to paint — and to go larger. You can expect to see bigger works from me this year, and possibly more abstraction. It’s always a tough choice to go introspective and there’s a risk that I won’t be able to pay the rent, but I think the reward will be worth it — better paintings, more personal to me, and possibly in some new directions. I hope that will also inspire my students to take risks with their practice. Wish me luck!
Can you talk to us about manufacturing? How’d you figure it all out? We’d love to hear the story.
I do make all of my own artwork, both originals and prints. I even frame my own paintings, as it’s more cost-effective and faster to do them myself. It took me a long time to figure out the right materials and methods to make my own prints and what supplies and method to use for framing. A lot of artists use print-on-demand services, and there’s nothing wrong with that at all. But I prefer to have control over the end product, and I also like to send out my own artwork with certificate of authenticity, bio and a thank you note. In order to find the right products, I asked other artists what they were doing, and looked at some shops on Etsy. Ultimately, you have to order products and try things out to see what is best for you. I buy all my standard size mats in bulk, as well as most of my backing board and cello bags, from Golden State Art. I also buy a lot of my frames from them, and learned from my local custom framer how to DIY the backing so it’s the same as if I had it professionally done. I do buy some of my custom size and color mats from the same framer – Frame Express in Long Beach – when I want an especially thick mat to make an impact, for example. What I learned from all this is that I’m pretty controlling! And also that customers appreciate the extra effort and the affordability I can pass on from doing a lot of the finishing work myself.
Have you ever had to pivot?
Talk about a 180! I went from an international hospitality furniture sales career to being a self-employed starving artist in a blip. It wasn’t my intention to do so, I was at the top of my career and enjoyed it – the travel, most especially, but also the hard work, and as I’ve mentioned, I had plans to paint in my old age. But because I was too sick to continue my old career, I literally had no choice, and it was the best pivot I’ve ever made. I used to think that my old career had enough design and aesthetic aspects to fulfill my creative side. It was only when I started doing art full-time that I realized what it actually meant to be fulfilled in that sense. I hope to never look back, but I’ll never say never, because I may at some point want to change careers again. But I doubt it — an art career can have so many facets to it! There’s the teaching, also I mentor other artists who need help with social media and marketing, and I help them develop teaching curriculum. And then I have my plein air events business and, of course, there’s my own painting practice. I always talk about how getting sick was my silver lining: I never would have become a full-time working artist without it. So my advice to others is to consider embracing the changes, especially the ones you have no control over.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.anneQPdraws.com
- Instagram: @annekupillasfineart
- Facebook: @anne
- Youtube: @annekupillasfineart
- Other: www.eatpaintlive.com