We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Elana Hagler. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Elana below.

Alright, Elana 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 always drawing as a kid, but I never imagined that it could be a viable career path. So when I started college, I was a double major in neuroscience and psychology. I’ve always been fascinated with human nature and perception. I started taking art classes only my junior year. The summer before my senior year, I was awarded a scholarship to study art in Italy where I met two painters who changed the course of my life. The first was Lennart Anderson who was teaching there that summer. He would walk over to the painting I was struggling with and push the paint around with some brushes or with his fingers and suddenly the world on the canvas would start to come into focus. As far as I was concerned, this was magic, and I wanted to learn more. He was very kind and giving as an instructor, and very encouraging to young, inexperienced me. I noticed that on that summer program, which included many students from the US but also from all around the world, that there were three students whose painting and drawing skills seemed light years beyond everyone else’s. The way that they constructed their paintings was extremely appealing to me. I sat behind them and studied the way that they interpreted the motif. What these three students had in common was that they were all studying with Israel Hershberg, who had opened his own school, the Jerusalem Studio School, in Israel. At the end of that summer, he came to visit the program in Italy and gave a slide talk about his work. I was blown away by the sense of mystery and gravitas in his paintings, and I knew that I had to find a way to go study with him. That is what brought me to study in the Master Class at the Jerusalem Studio School for two years, after which I embarked on the MFA program at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. So really, it’s always been about the people I met and the pursuit of this activity that has continued to feel like sheer magic to me even after all these years.

Elana, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

I’m a fine artist: I paint with oils, I draw, and I also work in numismatic design. I’ve been designing coins and medals for the United States Mint since 2019, when I first joined their Artistic Infusion Program. When people ask me what I do, I often say, “I’m a painter.” This is often followed by them asking me if I paint houses, to which I answer, “sometimes!” I describe myself as a representational painter, since I paint and draw objects and people that are very recognizable as such. The French writer Émile Zola famously said, “Art is a corner of nature seen through a temperament.” So that’s what I have to offer—the world expressed through my own idiosyncratic sense of beauty. I’ve worked on many portraits over the years and it is one of my favorite subjects. Whether I do so in oil paint, in charcoal or pastel, or as a drawing intended for a coin or medal, it always feels like a weighty honor to try to do right by that person. I feel like I get to know them over the course of the portrait, and always find that I feel very tenderly towards them during my creative process. People are endlessly fascinating, and the task of depicting them is endlessly challenging in the best possible way.

Have you ever had to pivot?

I actually had a huge pivot professionally in these past couple of years. I had taught at the college level for fourteen years and I always loved working with students. My husband is also in education and in the early years of first pursuing our studies and then landing those first teaching jobs, we moved around quite a bit. While I am immensely glad for all of the people I met and all of the experiences I had while living in many different places, it was certainly challenging each time to start in many ways from scratch. I always dreamed of moving back home to California, where I grew up, and continuing to raise our two children there. Four years ago we had the chance to do just that. We both left behind tenured professorships when we made the choice to move to Los Angeles. I continued to teach part-time in the area as we settled into life here. Moving back to California was a fresh start and a good opportunity to reevaluate my goals and aspirations. What did I really want my life to look like? At this time, as I was setting up my new studio, I continued to get more and more numismatic design work. Between teaching, painting, designing for the Mint, and raising my two children, I found that I was stretching myself too thin. I had to essentialize and prioritize. And as much as I loved teaching, my deepest passion was as a creator, and it was time to structure my life as much as possible towards making space for my creative work. While I had a fair bit of sturm und drang in getting to that decision, once I made it, I felt the inner peace that let me know that this is the right path for me at this stage of my life. It’s important to me that I’m living my life consciously, and not ever just doing what I’ve always done just because I’ve always done that. This is a very recent change in my life…I feel that my art-making has been reinvigorated by it.

What do you find most rewarding about being a creative?

It’s twofold: the people I meet and the fact that I get to follow my bliss. Through art, I have met the most wonderful and insightful people. I’m always learning from the people I encounter and am deeply grateful for the relationships that I have built while on this journey. The mythologist Joseph Campbell famously advised, “follow your bliss,” encouraging people to pursue what gives them a deep sense of joy and purpose. While it’s all been very hard work, and I have definitely trod down the path less taken, I am always filled with profound gratitude that I spend my time creating what is beautiful and meaningful to me and that, wonder of wonders, it has even found appreciation by others. Art-making is a very ancient way of sharing, and a deeply human impulse.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.elanahagler.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/elana_hagler/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/elanahagler
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/elana-hagler-70949830/

Image Credits

Images of coins courtesy of the United States Mint.