We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Jennie Mizrahi a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Jennie thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Learning the craft is often a unique journey from every creative – we’d love to hear about your journey and if knowing what you know now, you would have done anything differently to speed up the learning process.

I was very fortunate to have exposure to good art instruction all the way back in elementary school extending through college. I had my hands on paint and clay from age 5 onward. When I got to high school, I didn’t take any art classes the first two years, feeling that now I had to get serious and focus on career oriented things. Since I was good at science and math, I assumed that would be where I finally ended up, but being away from art was too hard. I had a crisis junior year and found my way back to the art classes I loved. I ended up going to art school for college, and have had art related employment and sold my art independently ever since. I don’t know that I could have done anything to speed up my learning process. I did a lot of independent exploration outside of the classroom that helped a lot, but a formal art education with skilled instructors was already an efficient path to learning my craft. Teaching art to others honed it even more.
What I didn’t get was information and instruction on the business side of doing art for a living, and that is something I still feel is holding me back. I am looking into taking accounting classes at a community college or even looking at Kahn Academy to help fill this gap.
The single most important skill I learned for my craft was learning to see, and it is one that is still evolving. For those who have not gone through this process, it may sound like something that one just does, but learning to direct attention to useful visual information, in what order, and how to translate that in various media, is a process. We don’t see everything all at once, and drawing, painting, and sculpting all help guide what I see. It is an interactive process, not a passive one.
Time is the biggest obstacle to learning more. I always want more time to paint. I always want to learn new techniques and materials. But I still have to eat, sleep, market my work, and all of the other activities that make a life. I hope we do get multiple trips through this life, because I will never have time to learn all that I want to.

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

For those of you who do not know me, I am an oil painter. My work focuses mostly on hyper-local landscapes, locations within an hour drive of my home in Northern Colorado. My style swings between impressionistic and photorealistic, but I do occasionally also venture into the more abstract multimedia pieces, almost always inspired by the color or composition I find in nature. Having both bodies of work (representational and abstract) helps to keep me inspired and learning new things. I stay hyperlocal because I want to share the beauty I see all around me every day, whether it is in the fields I drive by on my way to my job teaching, or the mountains I see every evening as I drive home, the sky and land around me deserve attention and appreciation, reverence. In our busy lives, it can be easy to focus on our thoughts and worries, what we did wrong in the past or what we need to do in the future, but the beauty is around us right now. I believe we are here to see and appreciate it, to be witnesses to creation. We just need reminding sometimes.

Have you ever had to pivot?

Right after graduating art school, I went to work at a bronze foundry. I was doing mostly figure sculpture at the time, and it was a good way for me to have a steady paycheck and get a discount on casting my work. It went well for a time, though I was terrible at marketing and getting connected to the art community around me. I was horribly shy, looked much younger than my age, and had difficulty putting myself forward. I was still waiting to be “discovered,” I think, and was not prepared for entering the world of sculpture sales. There was some turnover in the ownership of the foundry, and it became obvious the business was beginning to fail, though slowly. Everyone I worked with was unhappy. I switched positions to get out of management (I was head of my department by then) and so was no longer training new hires, and I missed it. Around the same time, I heard a newscast about the teacher shortage (which hasn’t ended in the 20 years since). I realized that I had been a teacher for a lot of my life, at a science museum while I was at school, and training new people and helping others to improve their technique as a manager. I missed it. So I went back to college for a teaching certificate and Masters degree. For a while, I felt like this might be a death-knell for my art career, but it wasn’t. Teaching helped me better understand what I already did well as an artist, and helped me to find and fix some weak areas of my technique. It also forced me to work with people more, be a leader every day, to be more organized, and to initiate interactions with all sorts of people. It helped me grow up, gain confidence, and better express myself both through and outside of my artwork. It also has given me motivation to learn more about the art business; as I try to help my students understand their artistic opportunities, I must further develop my own. It helps to motivate me when things get difficult. I may not feel it is worth figuring out how to enter shows and keep track of taxes for myself, but I know that knowing this will help me pass it along to my students, so I keep going. My students and I both benefit.
Leaving the foundry also eventually led to the pivot from figure sculpture back to painting, which had been my passion in high school. Paintings are less expensive and time consuming to make than bronze sculpture, they store more easily, and they are easier for people to afford, so the customer base is larger. I grew to love color again. Wildest of all for me was that I was enjoying making landscapes–what I had once considered background stuff. One of the things that drew me to sculpture is not having to deal with the background, and now it is the focus of what I do. I feel this reflects a better understanding of composition and art as a whole object, as well as its ability to connect with others’ experiences. So it helps me connect with people more, too.
I am in the midst of another pivot. Since the pandemic, I have been far more active in my pursuit of my art career. While I plan to teach for a while yet, I want to be an artist now as well, and to have a solid career to step into when I finally retire from teaching at a public school. This is a slow and well planned out change, but sometimes it feels like it is about to race out of my control, while other times it feels like it is at a screeching halt. The volatility and seasonality is something I am still working out.
As someone wise once said, change is the only constant.

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

I wish I could say that the most rewarding aspect of being an artist is connecting with others, or sharing my vision, but I’m just not that altruistic. I make art for selfish reasons. I have a racing mind. Working on my art makes it still. When I am painting, I exist only in the moment, and it feels sometimes like I disappear completely, becoming a conduit for the process. It is all enveloping, intense, and peaceful at the same time. All sense of time disappears. There is only the task in front of me, and finding a way to complete it. But that sounds too goal oriented. It isn’t about the finished product at all, but about being in the process. Social scientists call this being in a flow state (thank you Dr. Csikszentmihalyi). Some experience it doing sports or other challenging activities. For me, it has always been art. It is where I find my joy. The activity itself is its own reward. Then I sell it because other people like it, I need more space, and it pays for my art supplies. I am happy that others find my work moving, and it helps me justify doing it when I am feeling stressed or down, but I make art so that I can be happy. I think that is another reason I teach it, to help others find the same joy and peace.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.mizrahiarts.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mizrahiarts/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mizrahiarts

Image Credits
Jennie Mizrahi