We recently connected with Elizabeth Marie and have shared our conversation below.
Elizabeth, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. We’d love to hear the backstory behind a risk you’ve taken – whether big or small, walk us through what it was like and how it ultimately turned out.
Every stroke of my brush is a risk. A risk on my reputation, my finances, my ego and my fragility. I like to think I’m the kind of person who can step off the cliff and know, just know the crystal bridge that is invisible to my eye is there to welcome my foot and guide me across. The joys of fantasy verse reality!
When I first began to truly create my art, not the commission work of a copy artist, meaning my client would give me their wallpaper pattern or something of meaning and I would make matching backsplash tiles, sinks, murals or dinnerware for them. It was always about what the client wanted, never what I want to express.
Then it happened; I divorced. Breathing was the hardest part. A gentle reminder every few seconds to exhale and inhale again was how I began. Then the timid, broken woman felt the power surge to paint, paint me and my emotions. The style of bright, happy colors and bold patterns disguised my deep hurt, anger, love and perpetual internal conversation about choice. The paintings looked happy, inviting and in your face, love. Yet, hidden within the illusion of shading and depth were words, symbols that couldn’t be felt or seen from a distance. The viewer had to be up-close and personal with my paintings to truly connect that deep.
Fast forward years of painting my emotions and life experiences including a three-year relationship with the Angels painting their portraits and writing their stories, I was given a slap in the face reality check by this old guy at a psychic fair that my friends ditched me at, even though it was their idea to go.
My first risk was staying. I don’t mind eating or going to the movies alone, but being around groups of people that I’m supposed to interact with creates high anxiety. As I sat on the concrete steps outside the restaurant where the event was taking place, I put on a brave face and talked myself into going and take a peek to what it was.
It was a dark and gloomy room, a bar in real life mingled with ghost stories of this town and its travelers over the centuries. Tonight, a foreboding that the people coming to speak to their respective psychic brought all their sorrows, dead loved ones and worries like steamer trunks being loaded on to the Titanic. Hopeful heavy, really heavy.
Looking at the openings on the list, which there were very few, I picked the next available psychic, handed over my $20 bill for twenty minutes and waited, watching the second hand on the clock on the wall to the right of the hostess. My trance ended abruptly to people skootching their chairs and footsteps.
Standing up, I head to my psychic’s table. He was an odd-looking older fellow, and as I sat down in the chair opposite of him, I noticed he moved his hands from the table to the sanitizer bottle and pumped it 2 times. After rubbing it in he dropped his hands palm ups on the table, looked me in the eye and said, “…well, take my hands.” I was so put off, mind you this was 2012, long before hand sanitizer was the norm of the pandemic culture. I instantly felt like I was tainted.
He began speaking, rambling, speculating and I sat there listening. Then he says, “Your art is just too colorful and happy. It’s awful art.” It took my breathe away. I respect people being honest with their feelings that come up around me and my talents, but that…them thar fightin’ words. “OH!” I respond, “then what?” He said that I need to “…paint darker, black. Not so happy, just not that horrible bright color stuff.” I was so happy when the 20-minute timer went off. Hearing the ding, pulled my hands back with respite and a torte “Thank you”. I left murmuring “I’ll show you. You want black, I can paint black”.
And that was the biggest risk of all, to challenge my artistic style and create from a dare. To undefine me and go into the dark abyss of creativity. The challenge was on, on me and me only because that psychic guy would never see me again, I truly had nothing to prove to him, only to me and the forces that be.
As I sat, recalling his face, hearing his words and the warmth of his hands, a great welling-up of emotions from anger to bliss, to sadness and resolve, I took a blank canvas panel and painted it completely black and waited. What I experience were connections to art, to soul and the universe.
The paintings became Soul Portraits. A visual story of the person. An incredible painting with validations, recognition and interpretations of the soul’s journey past, present and future, that are known and will be known. Born from a risk, a new way of revelation and healing was born.
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 a bit of an enigma to the perceptions of what an artist is. There is a social and entertainment stereotype that an artist looks unconventional, usually dressed in black, disheveled living, unkempt, poor, and psychologically questionable. In the cast of characters, it’s not hard to see who is the villain, the artist, the nerd, the wealthy, the ingenue, or jock. I do get a kick, now that my hair is brilliant white/grey people immediately say, you must be an artist.
While I paint on canvas and with words, I also have a resume that gleams with left brain brilliance. Most artist don’t have a lick of business sense, the drive to create overwhelms everything else.
I come from a family of entrepreneurs. My mother’s grandmother owned a grocery store in Canada. From there, my grandfather a grocery store in Albuquerque NM and the drive of business owner hasn’t stopped in the generations since.
My lineage is one of kings and nobodies on my father’s side. Rev. Samuel Whiting and his wife of royal blood lines were some of the first folks in the early 1600s to head this way in hopes of a life that brought freedom, settling in what is now Boston Massachusetts. My mother, a first generation American with her parents finding their way to the United States via Jamaica and Canada from Lebanon and Syria.
As a child I watched in wonder the world around me, of diverse cultures coming together. The dynamics of this, brought wonder to me and the seed of creativity already rooted in my DNA, was nurtured with the spectacle of what a dreamer dreams and the actions to bring it to life.
It’s a road of paths for me, I have all these gifts and talents. What to choose? Well, them all! Since the age of 14 working in our family’s ice cream parlor, I learned management, labor, customer service, and marketing, while dabbling in dance, drawing, writing, playing instruments and acting. I see life as a celebration of my five senses and I want them all engaged.
All this hoopla of the past to bring us to this moment, why art and why Soul Portraits? I believe, actually know that we come here to planet earth by choice and design. We create the world we are living, the people we meet and the outcomes to learn. Our souls are wondrous and curious. And with that, there are so many challenges. Some of us come with easy designed lives and some of us taking the harder unthinkable life.
As I paint the commissioned Soul Portraits, I have worked with individuals, aspiring entrepreneurs, and coaching companies. These portraits give a visual to discussions during coaching sessions. It is beyond amazing to hear the stories of what was in the portrait, was the problem, hope, questioning, ego and dream the client couldn’t quite articulate. When they see it, it opens doors to new paradigms and answers.
I entertain a thought and see where it will go; in my paintings, my books, my conversations. The et cetera of me is intriguing.
In your view, what can society to do to best support artists, creatives and a thriving creative ecosystem?
The thing is, most of us are completely unaware that everything in our environment is creation; from the shoes on our feet, food we eat, music we hear, to the high rise building and everything in it, was a thought of a person, that was driven from an need to artist concept to reality.
Supporting the arts is different than supporting the artist. Many of us, especially in these times just don’t have the je ne sais quoi, character appeal that too many patrons, product sponsors and influential people like when it comes to the idea of an artist. So, to get the attention, the artist becomes the art. Many of us are regular ole’ joes with art that is beyond exception knowing if we could just get your attention, you’d be star struck.
Benefiting an artist is personal and very intimate. Supporting the arts, well, is like smelling a great dinner without ever sitting at the table to dine. You miss the people, the taste, the ambiance of the whole meal. Supporting an artist is a meal that never ends.
The Ecosystem is delicate and too much focus in one directions deprives the art enthusiast. Owning the work directly from the artist or 1 degree of, is a constant reminder of that moment you felt the piece, to be relished every time that painting kisses your eyes or punches you in the gut.
Are there any resources you wish you knew about earlier in your creative journey?
Every time I hear Willie Nelson’s song Mama, Don’t Your Babies Grow Up to Be Cowboys, I subconsciously switch the world cowboy to artist. It’s a hard life truth be told. Art is subjective and rejected.
Seems such a simple thing, yet if that wish had been granted, I would have realized that being an artist is a business. To have assembled an amazing team of marketing, patrons, influential folks, financial advisors and supporters. An artist isn’t taken seriously until they have a track record of sales, likes, followers and the humor in that is, once you have that, you don’t need the business loan. You have a following with legacy which supports artistic endeavors.
With a business mindset, an artist can unemotionally approach their creativity in ways that offer a life net when its not flowing, a hand up when the window opens again and a prosperous livelihood.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://emarieart.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/elizabethmariefineart/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/elizabethmariefineart
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/emarieart/
Image Credits
Elizabeth Marie