Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Debra Jones. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Debra, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Have you been able to earn a full-time living from your creative work? If so, can you walk us through your journey and how you made it happen? Was it like that from day one? If not, what were some of the major steps and milestones and do you think you could have sped up the process somehow knowing what you know now?

To be honest, I was trained as an artist and took a long vacation. I took it up while still working and could afford my art supplies. Ha ha. In order to earn a full time living, I worked hard to bring way down my necessities and tried to balance, reducing my hours of the day job while working harder, marketing better, demonstrating, pretty much all I could think of to bring them to even. The day I realized I was able to bring in AT LEAST what I was earning at the cut back day job, I cut more and more. I had a few clients that never quit me, and I was able to hustle the portraits and still have some pocket money. I have always been cautious and my business plan was divided into thirds. One third of my life would be getting the jobs. One third would be painting them and the last third would be enjoying life and travel etc. It ended way closer to most of my life hustling up the work. I have a broad range of pricing and quickly found that entering shows, for me, was a nice line on my resume, but actually did not produce work. What worked best was happy clients telling other happy clients. I did pet events and western events, nothing that would require shipping unless it was a commission.
WAY too frugal, but I never had to finance myself. Money in became my costs and above it was my profit.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

I say “I paint anything with eyeballs.” I am a portrait painter, animals or human, and made a career of it. I found happy clients and their referrals and return business was the best way to run my business. I trained at the Rocky Mountain School of Art, now I think is an institute, but learned all the basics there. I got a commercial art job or two at various ad agencies and a text book company with experience as a product designer as well. Then I took a creative turn. I became a professional puppeteer for a while, amateur actress and worked at a newspaper or two.
Not long after moving to Arizona, I was tired of the commercial stuff, and felt so little actual art was involved that I took a 20 some year vacation. As a manicurist I finally cracked when I realized I was so far from my tribe I needed to get back to my training.\
I did open studio figure work for a few years before I dove back in with acceptance to the Portrait Society of America show in New York, September 2001. They blew the place up when I was there.
It was choppy business, but I finally finished padding up my resume with entries and prizes and decided commission work was more stable and less expensive than shipping across the country for prizes, not purchases.
I love living things. I love capturing that uniqueness in the eye that shows personality in humans or their pets.
I was chosen as the Artist In Residence in the Petrified Forest in 2017, the same year, I was required to go on Social Security, I moved into an artist community in Mesa AZ and for the first time in my life, I stopped hustling. Covid made me slow down and I am taking clients, but not chasing them, which is a change. I WOULD RATHER paint and draw than anything else. But I am slowing… not by choice, but by circumstances.

How can we best help foster a strong, supportive environment for artists and creatives?

I would not put the burden on society as a whole. A decade or so now, I wrangled a lot of very talented, if little known female artists into a show I called “Women Making Faces”. My idea was to help educate the public as to the traditional painting and try to turn their attention to the fine arts, not just the camera for honoring outstanding individuals. AND to show the outstanding women in the state and the women who were out here to paint them. I was overwhelmed by the lack of simple marketing skills these women lacked. I literally had a few excellent women ask what they should charge!!! I believe the education of artists is missing BASIC business training. I don’t mean Instagram marketing or paying to advertise, just the simplest business skills – pricing of commissions, shipping, time spent and materials and how to even decide on such things as prices for gallery shows.
To this day, I am amazed that the simplest skills are so ignored. The creative individual has so many obstacles anyway, asking for payment is still the hardest part of the job.
I am constantly bombarded with seminars on how to be creative, how to maximize sales, how to broaden your internet presence. These are actually great for those ready for them, but we paint and pencil, hands on artists, with traditional skills, need traditional, basic knowledge.

Have you ever had to pivot?

I guess my best recall was how I was challenged early in my portrait career. I had a client that did not like my piece. She was going to give it as a gift to her husband who she was on the outs with and ended having me do a drawing of her naked back. That was it. I remember commiserating with a friend. I was great at likeness, but got a sort of slap in the face about the BUSINESS end of portraiture. I had heard it many times since, that it was NOT what a person looked like that you were painting. Rather what they WANTED to look like.
I was weeping and trying to understand why a client would reject a really great piece, and she coldly said that perhaps I did not have the temperament to deal with these subjects. I was o offended! I just spent 20 years with spoiled women, painting their nails and keeping my opinions to myself. I had the cred to do that!!! It was a challenge. I stopped “painting competitively” as a later teacher told me, and began working hard to hone my skills to make the client happy. I did well. Somewhat am sad I had to become a full scale business woman first, and a compassionate draftswoman second.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.jonesportraitart.com
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/djstar/
• Twitter: @deejaystar
• Other: dog-a-dayartblog.blogspot.com picturesmithjones.blogspot.com petrifiedart.blogspot.com

Image Credits
All of the work I created from my own photos and photographed the finished pieces. The final piece is a group of drawings of my neighbors done during covid from my own snapshots. The mural was for the Shining Light Foundation using historical reference photos for their Black History Matters murals of 2021