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

Alright, Janice thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Can you recount a story of an unexpected problem you’ve faced along the way?

Time is the essential ingredient in the process for creating a piece. For me, it’s not so much the time to complete a piece as much as the time I need to simply sit and think and gather visual inspiration.
About twenty-five years ago when I became the mother of a very active child the only time I could work was when he napped or later when he was in school.
My son was challenging in many ways and those challenges often took time away from doing my artwork.
Then, during COVID I found myself with the time I had been needing to be able to experiment and allow myself to explore an area that I had been wanting to explore for years, working with fabric.
COVID was a blessing for me creatively and I was able to maintain a good creative practice until this year when I became the main caregiver to my aging parents. They both died this year as well as my closest uncle, my dear brother-in -law and several friends. I also lost my part time job at a publishing company that I had for 14 years. All these losses included a loss of time.
In addition, I became a grandmother for the first time and subsequently part time caregiver to my granddaughter.
My life has become a complicated mix of life and death. It is extremely difficult to find time to both grieve and celebrate or create.

Janice, 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?

Canvas Rebel/About me

Coming from an artistic family, it was natural. that I was encouraged to be creative.
My mother painted and made collages, my grandfather made his living doing faux woodgrain and marbelizing as well as murals. My father could draw anything we asked him to.
I particularly loved children’s book art so being an illustrator was the natural path for me.
I graduated from Parsons School of Design with a BFA in Illustration and did my best to pursue a career. I had some success but I often found myself in situations where art directors didn’t quite know what to do with my work. Editorial Art Directors would say I should try children’s books and children’s book people said my work was “too sophisticated” for them.
A teacher at Parsons said to me that I didn’t know if I wanted to be an illustrator or a fine artist.
I realized that my art was hard to place which didn’t lead to a lot of work but I persisted knowing that persistence and luck are sometimes more important than talent.

Because I graduated college at a time pre-computer, I never learned how to work digitally. To be honest, I didn’t have a strong desire to learn either.
I loved the feel of materials, paper, paint, pencils, glue. I liked to get my hands dirty. Computer art was too clean, too perfect and too technical for me.
I kept sketchbooks full of odd line drawings with limited color and I moved from there into more full color and mixed media work incorporating collage elements.
I worked for all kinds of clients over the years from advertising to text books. A favorite client was Hay House for whom I produced three decks of affirmation cards written by Carolyn Myss. Those card deck projects produced 175 pieces of art which have been reused for other projects over the years.

From mixed media on paper, I moved to fabric mixed media. That allowed me to do an illustration for a seed packet for the Hudson Valley Seed company and a piece for “No Depression” magazine. I also worked regularly doing illustrations for a column in “Threads” magazine for a time.

I know will always be an illustrator more than a fine artist.
I love to problem solve with text to come up with unique solutions that don’t just take the text literally but expand on it.

What do you find most rewarding about being a creative?

This is a difficult question because being an artist is who I am and have always been. I just see the world differently. Art gives me a place to refocus myself and to be absorbed in color, pattern, texture, mood as well as stories. It can be meditative and therapeutic. For me there’s just an intuition with art that I find difficult to teach yet at the same time, I believe that anyone can gain something by picking up art materials and making marks.
I’ve known many people who have discovered how calming and enjoyable art can be once they get over the need to be perfect.
I create for myself but if someone else finds pleasure in what I do, that’s a different kind of reward.

Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?

Being a financially successful artist is difficult to sustain so over the years I have had to take various jobs to supplement an income from art. Each job I took, from photo researcher to artist agent assistant to art buyer at an ad agency taught me something valuable especially from a business standpoint. From those jobs, I learned about copyright law, portfolio presentations and contracts.

There have been times I thought of going back to school to take a different road. I considered becoming a librarian, an art teacher, a historic preservationist, an urban archeologist but art and illustration remain my first love. Had I given up at a younger age, I might have chosen a different path but something always brought me back.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.janicefried.com
• Instagram: https://instagram.com/janicefriedillustration
• Other: Blog:

  https://janicefriedillustration.wordpress.com