Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Kristan Ryan. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.
Hi Kristan, thanks for joining us today. We’d love to hear about when you first realized that you wanted to pursue a creative path professionally.
I first realized I wanted to be nothing but an artist at the age of five when I watched my dad show me how to draw cartoons. I wasn’t interested in cartoons because I had never seen a television and only one movie, so I didn’t know what cartoons really were because my first years were spent in Germany and Morocco. We didn’t have TV in either of those countries at that time, at least not in homes. However, I was fascinated by how my father drew people in what he called “cartoon shapes” to entertain me. I would pick up a pencil and draw what he had just done in front of me, and it was very similar to what he had drawn, but he didn’t encourage me. He wasn’t the kind of man I would tell what I thought to, so he never knew my desire. He was a self-taught artist who was a military guy who had fought in WWII but would have preferred to have worked as an artist but couldn’t. We were living, at the time I came to my realization, in Casablanca, Morocco. The Moroccans mesmerized me with the design and color of their buildings, and I was captivated by my Moroccan female friends and their mothers and adult female relatives– I often was able to see them without their faces covered. American women during that time were also suffering from lack of rights. I often saw them beaten by their American soldier husbands who got away with it because I had heard military police say these women were married to them so that could happen. This included my father. I often had to hold my mother’s hand and help her with translation so she could get on the bus to go to the hospital, whether we were in Germany or Morocco. She didn’t speak the other languages and because her eyes were often damaged by punches it was hard for her to see, so I had to take her.
During my youth. I watched all the females (women or girls) in my life, happy or suffering, and understood that it was my job, even at a young age, to paint portraits of them as I saw them, so I tried to teach myself how to do that.
For the record, my parents and I moved to Germany when I was three months old and then to Morocco after a few years, so my first language was German, then English, then French and Arabic. My parents split when I was almost 10, so my mother, my brothers and I moved to the US around my 10th birthday. Once in America, I tried to draw people and things that I saw, but I still never had a lesson because my mother, whose focus was on writing, thought I should become an English teacher like her, and my father was out of the picture.
No one paid attention to anything I drew during that time, not even in school where I was having trouble adjusting to American culture. As a result, I started drawing less and making artsy things from paper, cloth, crayons, crocheted, and whatever I could find when at home and on my own time. I rarely showed my drawing and painting during my early life in America to others because at that time I didn’t have lots of access to art supplies, plus I was a Third Culture Kid who was having trouble adjusting. I was horribly homesick for Morocco and my Moroccan best friend who lived on a farm across the field from where I lived when we lived in Casablanca. I had no idea what do with my art besides just expressing myself as I needed to. I only knew I wanted to be recognized for drawing and painting people the way they REALLY felt, not just smiling pictures of them doing whatever they were doing and always smiling, unless the person I was painting was truly happy.
My goal was to make all I have told here the basis for my art, creatively and professionally.
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.
My name is Kristan Lee Ryan and I am an acrylic painter. I was born in Belleville, Illinois, to Southern American parents who were associated with the US Airforce, my mother teaching soldiers and my father being one. We moved to Germany when I was 3 months old and much later moved to Morocco. I had two brothers by the age of 6, who both died as relatively young adults, one from a motorcycle accident and the other from leukemia. I was their oldest child.
Once I returned to the US at the age of 10, my experiences here were tough and complicated, so I dropped out of high school at the age of 16, hitch hiked around the country, and met other unknown artists who represented their own emotions through their art. They impressed me because many had painted their stories all over the streets, on buildings, and other places during the Civil Rights Movement and Vietnam War period as a means of expressing themselves.
Their work and bravery influenced me further. This made me eager to begin painting portraits of people from all over the world no matter what I was doing, so I taught myself by reading books, watching other artists at work on the streets. I knew I needed more than the odd jobs I had so I earned a GED at the age of 26, later a math degree and then master’s degree that promised to help me make money so I could pay for my art supplies and care for my children I then had as a teenager and move forward to meeting my goals.
My commitment to suffering females increased dramatically, so I went to the University of London, Institute of Education, where I earned my Doctorate in Education International in Adult Learners in Vocational Education and studied under famous feminist educator Elaine Unterhalter, as well as famous male educators. There I read books by bell hooks, Martha Nussbaum and others. I returned to the US and ran several vocational colleges for students who arrived with GEDs, but I kept working on my art. I also worked to pay for my education while studying, so buying art supplies was limited. However, I had to focus on art as well because I knew I would never forget my goals, which meant I would need to start my own art business to stand up and shout out.
So, as I moved forward, I realized I needed to use whatever money I earned from selling pieces of my art and working other jobs to start my own art business full time, which I now have. I focused on only my fulltime art business after I returned from working in Northern China for 4.5 years, where I was influenced by lots of unknown Chinese artists and where I became fluent in Mandarin Chinese and where I saved my money.
Once home from China, I decided it was time that I developed KristanRyanArt LLC and from where I now sell my art from my art studio and from the Athens, GA, street in front of the Athens-Clarke County courthouse. Once I arrived in Athens, I was compelled to do my art projects, let people know I am a self-taught artist, pitch my work, and sell it. I currently have three major art projects through which I sell my art: 1) Angry Females Done Swallowing Our Words, 2) From Boys to Men, in which I paint the men as children between the ages of 4-6 but who I also paint as adults in separate paintings and tell the world what their goals were as children and what they achieved as adults, and 3) Ukrainian Heroes (some deceased and others injured and healing)–I’m painting them as asked to do so by Ukrainians living in Georgia.
I began my first major projected call Angry Females Done Swallowing Our Words for which I am most proud. I first posted what I wanted to do with this project on Facebook because it’s clear to me that many people without lots of money would love to somehow be a part of a project and to possibly buy art if they can relate to what you are saying with your artwork. If you develop a part of the project they can afford, as well as paint on canvases, you can be successful. Remember that it does not mean you should sell your art on canvas for less than what you feel it is worth.
Once I posted what I was doing with my angry females’ project, which is to paint angry females done swallowing what they need to say and who have all been told not to show anger, females from all over the world began reaching out to me. I require them to tell me what angers them (this continues to be ongoing) and then I paint them expressing their anger. When finished I post their portrait on Facebook and Instagram and tell the world why they’re angry. If they want their name posted as well, I do, but if they don’t that’s fine, I don’t. I was not shocked then or now that so many females contacted me about painting them and continue to do so, but lots of other Americans were shocked and often feel the need to tell me as much.
What I did afterward that I am most proud of is that I contacted a company in Florida called PostcardMania and had them produce 5,000 postcards of my angry female paintings. I then began to sell them as well as my art on the streets of Athens, GA in front of the Athens-Clarke County Courthouse. The back of the postcards has only my name, phone number and email and space to write, so they can be mailed to anyone to whom the buyer wants to mail them. In this way, people who want to buy my art but don’t have thousands of dollars for the original of my paintings can afford the postcards of my work. I’ve sold thousands of my art postcards on the street as well as large, canvased art and have been commissioned by people who have seen my art postcards but are willing to buy original art from me. My major art and my postcards continue to be bought through either my art studio business at my home which contains my business office or on the Athens’s street by lawyers, workers, visitors, or tourists who stop on the street to talk about my art with me, but who also buy lots of postcards and tell me how much they don’t want to see me stop selling my work.
I’ve had several art shows in galleries around the Eastern US and Georgia and have a one of my paintings being shown in October in Pennsylvania at a major show in one of the better known galleries, as well as some of my art showing here in a well-known gallery in Athens in a major show also in October of this year, so I don’t need to be out on the street other than my childhood influenced me in the most amazing way to do so. I buy my street license throughout the year from Athens-Clarke County courthouse and my Georgia Business License yearly. I take photos of angry females coming out of court if these women allow it and when they do allow it, they tell me they are thrilled that I plan to paint them because they are done swallowing their anger. It’s my way of standing up for my mother and all the women in the world who need to be able to shout out though my art in any way they want me to paint them so they might be heard. I have also been invited by countries outside the US to consider showing my art which I hope to do someday soon.
I am proud of my three projects, but Angry Females Done Swallowing Our Words sets my artwork and me apart from others. I stand up for the rights of females, and therefore I am most proud of what the females I paint through my work shout out to the world.
Do you think there is something that non-creatives might struggle to understand about your journey as a creative? Maybe you can shed some light?
As a creative person, I’ve discovered that female creatives see the world differently from male creatives, which is fine, and differently from non-creatives. Male creatives are, by society overall, considered more variable, valuable, and creative than female creatives, which suggests male creative’s confidence in their work might be great to begin with, not that that is necessarily true either. However, female creatives are often expected to accept society’s version of how they should approach their work. I am not saying the work of male creatives is not wonderful or worse than female creatives. It’s just acceptably different by our society and approached from a different viewpoint.
As a female child creative, I was aware of what so many adults and children were going through emotionally and physically that I was moved by it, touched by the levels of their feelings in such a way that it forced me to show the actual expressions of people I drew or painted as I saw them, which often did not reach non-creative’s approval.
Non-creatives go through moments of fear that my current work makes them feel. More importantly, though some rejection influenced my creativity, it did not change my awareness of people’s emotions and influences how I pick the shades of each color for either clothes or backgrounds rather than the actual colors. The colors of the model’s eyes and their bodies are what non-creatives or creatives might see but their expressions tell those who are looking at these paintings exactly how the models felt, no matter what I had to do to make those feelings understandable by others. By the way, some of the women I painted sent me photos of themselves giving the world the finger, which I painted as part of their portrait because that is what they wanted, but non-creatives looking at my work often complain to me about that. Sorry, but I’m not sorry.
Many non-creatives have told me they know exactly how that person was feeling when I painted them but have told me that they believe I experienced/felt exactly how the person I painted felt while walking away from my work. They often tell me that they don’t think it’s healthy for me to paint angry females because “you must be stressed all the time and that’s dangerous for your health”.
Let me assure all non-creatives that I do not suffer my model’s emotions while I am painting them, but I am moved by how those I am painting feel when going through the entire process–there is difference. I am merely expressing their feelings as I see them with my art and am touched by those feelings out of sympathy for them, but I do NOT become them in the moment or suffer afterward. When I stop painting, I am not experiencing their suffering. Most creatives, in my experience, paint what they see, which is not necessarily what non-creatives see in the same way nor are the creatives made to continue to feel for days afterward the emotions of who they painted. It’s important for non-creatives to accept female creatives as willing to take risks with their creativity as part of their expression rather than to do their creativity in stereotypical ways. Allow them to be innovative and, you as a noncreative, do the best you can to explore a female creative’s work in a way you never have before. Make the art drive you to feel whatever you feel. That is the goal of art.
Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?
I once was asked to submit work to a well-known art gallery here in Georgia after I first returned to America. The gallery Director posted an ad in a local magazine asking for artists to come by the gallery on a certain day and time and to show one painting or one other type of artwork they had completed at least two years ago that no one had previously seen. Excited, I drove to the gallery on the day and time they said was the deadline, left the painting I wanted the Director to consider in my car until I heard the answer to a question I had.
Once in the gallery, I asked her if what she had meant in her ad was that you could submit your work if it had been painted over two years ago but hadn’t been seen in a gallery or art show during that time, but might have been seen by relatives or friends already, OR that they meant that not a person on the planet had ever seen it since it was painted in the last two years, even if had been in your art studio.
She became annoyed with me when I asked my question and said she was too busy to answer my question, so I said I have two paintings with me, one of which no one has ever seen and one that people visiting me have seen in my art studio, but which has never been seen in a show or gallery. I told her that’s the one I would like to submit. She again, annoyed, said she was too busy to deal with me so I should go get whatever I wanted, because she didn’t know why I was asking. I told her that I asked because other galleries have written the same rules and were happy to show your work if it hadn’t been shown in a gallery over the last two years and I did not want to break her rules. I told her other galleries didn’t mean that only you in the Universe had seen the art you planned to submit, so I needed to know what she meant. She then said, clearly furious with me, “I don’t care what you do. Go get whatever you want,” so I went back out, got in my car, and drove home, wondering why I had bothered asking her anything.
At 1:30 a.m. my phone buzzed, and I saw that I had a text message from her apologizing and asking me to bring whichever painting I wanted her to review, and she would review it, even though the deadline was when I had been at the gallery earlier in the day. She explained why she had said all she had said, and that the truth was they had no problem with me submitting the painting for review that had been in my art studio but not in public. She also told me that they didn’t like to say that out loud in public because that is not what they had posted in the ad. I took the painting to her the next day as requested, the one that had been in my art studio for two years that people in my family and my friends had seen. A few days later, the gallery sent me a message in which they told me they loved it and were showing it. Since that time, the gallery has commissioned me for other political work and asked me to participate in other events and the Director and I get along well.
My point is that you must ask what you need to know and stand up for yourself no matter what, but when others reach out to you with whom you have conflicts, listen to what they have to say and respond in the best way possible and in such a way that it helps them understand you. Believe me when I say anything can change if you are courageous and speak out, and once changed can lead in a positive direction.
Contact Info:
- Instagram: kristan_lee_ryan
- Facebook: Kristan Ryan and Kristan Ryan Art (both on Facebook)
Image Credits
Kristan Ryan