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

Barbara, appreciate you joining us today. If you could go back in time do you wish you had started your creative career sooner or later?

The short answer: Yes! I think I can blame my late start on the lack of self-confidence mixed with a pinch of “fear of success” as well. I also had health issues from a car accident, so the ability to afford good insurance was of the utmost importance to me, and was a factor of how far I perceived that I could take my artistic pursuits. The “starving artist” story that I’d been told made me believe that I could not possibly afford to be an artist and adequately take care of my health long term.

But there was always a tug in my heart for the artist’s life. Through continuing education, networking, participating in exhibitions, joining a couple of local art organizations, and receiving a few accolades for my work, my self-confidence grew in my ability and I could envision my life as an artist.

Eventually, the pressures of trying to be a full-time artist coupled with a full-time corporate graphic designer career, became too great for me to keep up with. My husband finally said, “something has to give, and I know it won’t be art because you love that too much. It’s time for you to leave your day job.” So that’s what I did. I retired early to be a full time artist.

I realize that I am the “It’s never too late” story. At the same time, there are a lot of things I’m doing that are very challenging for me. Being an artist IS HARD WORK! There is nothing easy about this path. And I just wonder how much more I could have accomplished if I had more faith in myself and my abilities earlier in my life. Maybe I could be taking things a little easier right now. Who knows? Still, I wouldn’t say I have any regrets. People and experiences have led me to where I am in my life at this moment. I can take this knowledge and help others younger than me who are considering a career in the arts. I would encourage them to have more confidence earlier in their life than I had. I would help them “take that leap” into the creative life of an artist.

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.

I’m an interdisciplinary visual artist and my work focuses on the figure and portraiture. I’m also a late bloomer as an artist. I had no idea I had any artistic talent until I began taking college courses for an interior design degree. I took my first drawing class and fell in love with the expressive nature of the figure. Roughly twenty years later, as my creative process was evolving, I began experimenting with dance-self-portraiture mixed-media monotypes, putting my face on the bodies of professional dancers. I called my first series, “Dancing with My Self”. Today, I’m painting pairs of women with longtime friendships engaged in conversation in a series titled “The Color of Women.” And in my third body of work titled “The Glorious Way She Moves” I paint women dancing and moving in multi-image portraits to convey multi-faceted aspects of women. I also love people’s stories, so my portraits in both of these series are accompanied by audio interviews that are accessible by mobile device. I just had a solo exhibition in February at Sala Diaz in San Antonio that featured 3 new portraits. I also had two of my Glorious portraits featured on billboards in Los Angeles for the Billboard Creative’s “We the People” exhibition in February of this year.

I have also created stop motion animation and experimental performance video. My art film works have been screened in film festivals and other events in San Antonio, across the country and even as far as Darmstadt, Germany.

In addition, I have worked as an independent curator. I’ve been invited to curate shows of women and Black artists. Being a curator was not in the artistic journey I planned for myself, but it is something that I find extremely fulfilling. This year I have curated 3 exhibitions: 1) Between Yesterday & Tomorrow: Perspectives of Black Contemporary Artists from San Antonio, for the City of San Antonio Department of Arts & Culture. The exhibition features 17 generationally diverse artists and runs through November 2023; 2) Beautifully Black Artists to celebrate Black History Month at Slab Cinema Arthouse that featured 7 artists; and 3) solo exhibition for Alethia Jones: Floating Between Chaos and Peace at Sala Diaz in San Antonio, Texas. This exhibition opened on June 2, 2023 and was featured in GlassTire magazine as one of five Texas exhibitions to watch. It was personally rewarding to know the artist whose work I chose to exhibit caught the eye of the staff at GlassTire.

I love to collaborate and support the art community, and I’ve just completed my second major commissioned collaboration project: a mural in downtown San Antonio on Commerce Street titled “Permission to Play.” The project is about connecting to our inner child and all the wonderful the benefits of playing. I worked with the 2020-2023 San Antonio Poet Laureate, Andrea ‘Vocab’ Sanderson, who wrote a song that inspired the imagery of the mural, and two local dancers that I filmed to get source material for the painting. The mural was installed on May 19, 2023 and will be on view through 2025.

Is there a particular goal or mission driving your creative journey?

I have recently come to realize that a major goal driving my creative journey is a desire to connect people in shared experiences with each other through my art. I believe there are human experiences that are unique to every person, and also there are experiences that are unique to each culture of people. Yet, while there are basic rituals that may be practiced differently between cultures, they share common reasons for the purposes of honoring, remembering, celebrating, observing, and the prosperity of legacy. Probably the most important thing I want to do is to connect people to their inner joy and resilience by witnessing positive relationships, strength and self confidence in the subjects I paint. Dance has been a perfect metaphor and vehicle for what I’m trying to do. It is the universal expressive physical language of the human body, whether the movements are big or small…bobbing our heads and tapping our toes to a rhythm, moving in sync with others as in line dancing, copying the moves of others, leading or being led by another in an intimate slow dance, using dance to tell a story, for self expression, or to socially connection with our friends; I find dance to be an infinite resource for exploring human interaction, self-healing, and release.

What do you find most rewarding about being a creative?

For me, there are many rewarding aspects of being an artist and creative. One of them has been discovering and becoming part of the wonderful community of artists across creative disciplines in San Antonio, Texas where I live. There is so much support we provide to each other through inspiration, sharing skills and techniques, attending each others exhibitions, and collaboration. I’ve had wonderful art mentors and I’ve also had the unique opportunity to promote other artists through curating exhibitions of emerging and established artists, or being invited to artist selection panels for grants, film festivals, and public art projects. When artists are working really hard, people notice and doors eventually open. I feel like I push my own work by encouraging other artists who in turn encourage and motivate me. Networking with other local artists is a beautiful serendipitous experience.
In my own work, the most rewarding aspect is the “process” of creating my art, or being “in the work”. I like to experiment and try different things, which makes me feel like a scientist. Sometimes I have to troubleshoot an experiment that has gone awry or problem solve by doing something “outside of my box” which makes me feel like an engineer. There is the challenge of understanding new tools, paints, surfaces, such as the Yupo paper I often work with: I had to learn to respect the unusual synthetic surface allowed me to do. The act of mark making itself always enthralls me, especially when I see that I am successfully capturing the essence of my subject and a good likeness; I have this sense of “kid-wonder” on my ability to draw and paint people that I hope I never lose. These many years after my first figure drawing class in the early 1989’s, I still look at things I make and say to myself, “Wow, I can’t believe I created that!”

Lastly, I find it very rewarding to paint other women and share their stories. I learn so much from them as I celebrate the way they move and interact with each other and their community, especially during this time we are living in, when the freedoms that generations of women that came before me have worked so hard for are being stripping away from us, as well as for the LGTBQ+ community. Art plays a critical role and documenting what people are experiencing, sharing perspectives, and even impacting the minds and hearts of the viewer. I want my art to uplift empower and connect people to shared experiences. When my art touches people in any of these ways, this is the greatest reward for me of all.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.barbarafelix.com
• Instagram: @proximityartmedia (art I make) @proximityofbeing (other people’s art I experience or curate)
• Facebook: www.facebook.com/bfelix3
• Linkedin: linkedin.com/in/barbara-felix-a3994381
• Other: https://vimeo.com/user9336485

Image Credits
Thelma Andrews Barbara Lawrence Robbie Hilliard Williamson and daughter, Canela Andrea ‘Vocab’ Sanderson Janet Scott Gloria Ray Shelby Hilliard Aissatou Sidime Blanton Aralyn Hilliard