We were lucky to catch up with Cristina White-Jones recently and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Cristina 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 think deep down I’ve always known I wanted to pursue a professional artistic career. Art has been something that has literally always surrounded me. My mom owned a gallery in the town I grew up in, so I was constantly surrounded by artists from all different backgrounds. Being around that for so many years really showed me that it was something that could be attainable as a career if I really wanted it to be, she’s also a very successful professional photographer and have watched her build her career from the ground up. In high school I kind of switched gears though and took a bit of a pause from visual art and focused more on music. It wasn’t until I went to college and was trying to figure out what I wanted to do with my life and started taking different kinds of classes, that I really decided that this was what I wanted to do. I had a professor my sophomore year of college, his name was Bruno Andrade. Bruno was an exquisite painter who was passionate about what he did and wanted to pass that passion onto all of his students. I remember him telling us if this was something we wanted to do, then we could do it; we just had to put in the work. He took us to his home studio and shared his work with us. I remember being so incredibly inspired after leaving there, I immediately went back to school and changed my major to painting and never looked back. I’ve been creating non stop since then, and luckily had parents that supported my decision as well. It’s taken a lot of time and hard work and took a little while to go completely full time, but I’ve been a full time artist now for almost 10 years.

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

I am an abstract contemporary mixed media artist. My work is known for its texture, color and movement. Generally I work on a larger scale, but occasionally I do, do smaller pieces. I have pieces available for purchase and also do commissions. I’m inspired by everything around me, in particular nature, color and the chronic pain that I live with on a day to day basis all affect what’s happening in my work. I love to repurpose and recycle materials that I find, to use as the “texture” in my work. I love to experiment with layering and laying down all different types of mediums. I like to think of the texture in my work as all of the “bumps and bruises” that I’ve had to over come to get to where I am today.

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

This is kind of about resilience both in life and my creative journey I suppose. When I was a child (11) I broke my hip and continued to have issues with it. By the time I was 17 I had already had about 7 operations on my right hip and leg, and then had my first hip replacement at 18. Against the recommendation of my doctors, I started college on time, on crutches, and continued to have to have more operations throughout college and nearly graduated college on crutches. Flash forward 20 or so years now and I’ve had to have several more, putting me now at about 30 total operations on one hip/leg. 6 of those were total hip replacements, some that did not go well and had extremely long recovery periods. I’ve also had kids (twins) in between some of these, and live with permanent chronic nerve damage and pain every single day of my life. Some days it’s better than others. My point to all of this is, is that I never gave up. Even when things were really really hard I kept going. I kept creating, I kept up with my dreams, and kept my eye on the goal. I’ve learned when things are hard, we have to displace the pain or whatever it is that we’re feeling and put it into something more constructive. In my case, creating was and has always been that thing that has gotten me through those situations. Attitude is everything. So even if you don’t have a situation like mine, if this is something you want, then you just have to do it, and keep going. You’re going to have ups and downs it’s all part of it.

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

I work with kids everyday in my studio, and for me one of the most rewarding aspects is getting to share my love of art with them.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.cristinawhitejones.com
• Instagram: www.instagram.com/ctwhiteartist
• Facebook: www.facebook.com/ctwhiteartist
• Other: if you want to include my studio its under www.facebook.com/artstudio303 or www.instragram.com/artstudio303

Image Credits
The first image of me credit should go to Queenfriday photography. All others of my work were done by me.