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

Alright, Antonia thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. We’d love to hear about when you first realized that you wanted to pursue a creative path professionally.

I was inspired by my parents.

I was about 7 years old when my mother caught me on the living room floor drawing Vitruvian Man by Leonardo da Vinci. My mother shrieked as she saw me drawing the nude study in all of its glory.

Who knew my art could evoke such a response? My fascination with creating was fully hatched in that moment.

Further, I grew up watching my father draw after coming home from work. He would use a pencil and eraser to relax and create. For my father, art was very personal, a private way to decompress after a day of work. I would always peek at what he was doing and recall thinking that one day, I’d create like him.

As you can see, from the beginning, I have had a passion for art and illustration.

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

I am a wife to Michael, a mom and grandmother.

I am known in my local community as an artist – building bridges with my creations. I create series of paintings about people, community art projects that involve others and illustrations using various types of paint.

Before working fulltime as an artist, I started my career in banking as an administrative assistant. I quickly became frustrated with the lack of creative expression. I had the opportunity to become a junior business analyst for the bank, but declined it to pursue learning and growing in the field of art.

After many years of study and perseverance, I founded Antonia Ruppert Fine Art in November 2008. One of my first clients was a library where my team and I delivered five paintings, a painted bench and a 14 ft digital mural all about the topic of literacy. I am thankful to artist Marg Rehnberg for collaborating with me on the mural. Though I have served other clients – designing murals and paintings for schools, park districts and other private and public collections – the public library is one of my favorite place to be.

My practice consists of two ways of making a public one and a studio one. Both practices are driven by dreams, visions and the desire to connect people.

Pre-pandemic, I facilitated community art events where community members would paint with me and get to know one another. This idea came to me in a dream during one of the toughest presidential election cycles. I began by bringing unlikely groups together. The resulting art—large canvases that could accommodate many people—fed my soul and created deep connections.

In my studio, I’m interested in the harmony of color and the contemplative nature of being. I work in various mediums depending on what I believe the message needs. I may have an idea for a painting and I will create the piece two or more times with different mediums until I am satisfied. Sometimes, after putting it aside, I pick it up again. The painting process is based on where I am in time. Every work starts with the desire to express but not necessarily a particular message. It takes its own shape and I am guided to the finish by simply working with the materials. Since so much of my work has been project based, I value the opportunities to express and commune with the materials.

In “Dreaming of Beauty” for example, I worked with this image using watercolor and collage—two of my favorite mediums. I painted the figure in the Western tradition and later cut out the background and began layering in the leaves and flowers.

I hope to dig into more work like this in the future.

My work has often been a response to changes in culture and what is going on in my life. My goal is to rebuild fragments.

Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?

I feel the need to share this with you. At the end of this, my hope is that you will see yourself able to go beyond failure to try again.

We are all prone to failure at some point. We can struggle with feelings of inadequacy – to dare to look over the fence at someone else’s seemingly perfect life. This becomes a burden we were not meant to carry.

Take it from me, it’s hard to hold onto shame associated with failure.

A goal I’ve had is attending graduate school. I wanted to attend graduate school for many years and have been excepted to schools three times but never attended it. Education has seemed so out of my reach. I thought it was finances. I thought it was not having enough money to go. Or not having it be the right season to go. Can you relate?

No one really knows the depths of your loneliness, despair or shame when you have a goal you’ve not reached.

One day I was reading a scripture passage I’ve seen tons of times.

“For every persistent one will get what he asks for. Every persistent seeker will discover what he longs for. And everyone who knocks persistently will one day find an open door.”
Matthew 7:8 TPT

When I read that verse, something stood up within me.

There is a joy in persistence. Of knocking again. Painting again. Singing again. Serving again. Applying again.

I recently applied again to another graduate program. Guess what? I’ve been accepted and my Masters program begins this June 2023.

I’m super excited.

I do believe that no one can know the depths of love, hope and faith you feel as you go to bed knowing that this day you had the faith to trust and try again.

Have you ever had to pivot?

Have you ever been faced with a seemingly impossible situation? We all have.

These past few years saw an upheaval of all that we know. We had to pivot, change and get truly comfortable with new normals.

A few years ago, I was really struggling as an artist. My mother gave me a passage to meditate on. She said God could make a way in the desert (Isaiah 43:19).
I found comfort in this.

After much prayer, I was led to read about the widow who went to the Old Testament prophet Elisha because she was in deep debt. She was afraid of losing her sons to slavery because she owed money and cried out for help.

He asked her what she had in her house and she told him she had some oil. He told her to go borrow jugs from her neighbors. Then he said to go to her house and fill the jars with her oil. Every single jar she borrowed was filled with oil. She was able to sell the oil and live off of it to pay her debts.

Wow! I had heard the story before but when I started meditating on this and using that in my own life, there was fruit in that.

I started to give my art away by making handmade cards for people – like for new moms or friends with new homes. I was not trying to do anything but give and sow many seeds. I would paint in watercolor and give the creations away. This occurred for a time before people bought anything from me.

Through giving the cards away, I came to create my own deck of inspirational cards—available via my website. They have inspired many people and I am grateful for this.

My takeaways are:

—Don’t be afraid.
—Take care of other people
—Get a vision.
—Be willing to give.
—Keep working with the supplies you have.

For me, perseverance is the idea of creating with no signs of success.

By pivoting, changing and growing—the ideas come and success becomes possible.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.antoniaruppert.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/antoniaruppertart/
• Facebook: https://m.facebook.com/antoniaruppertart/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/antoniaruppertart/

Image Credits
My photo—Karen Forsythe Photography Group pic—Chris Thomas—Your Passion 1st