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

Hi Laurie, thanks for joining us today. It’s always helpful to hear about times when someone’s had to take a risk – how did they think through the decision, why did they take the risk, and what ended up happening. We’d love to hear about a risk you’ve taken.

Laurie, 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 am the daughter of a creative mother and a business-oriented father. I found my start early in life painting for the Dallas PBS station auctions at the tender age of nine. My love of God’s creation and my passion for art grew stronger as I journeyed through early childhood. By seventh grade my parents bought my first easel, canvas, and paints. It truly all began for real.

Dreaming of fashion illustration, I began modeling at the Dallas Apparel Mart at age 14 for couture fashions out of New York. That continued for twenty years, but right after that, I found my first real job at age 16 hired by Neiman Marcus in downtown Dallas, working in the art department as an ad model. The next year of high school, my senior year, was shared with the 7th floor of Neiman Marcus, riding the bus to work each day and living the dream. I did a work program and it allowed me to do 7 hours a day modeling. I expanded my fashion career with additional modeling doing runway, television commercials and photography shoots through age 34. I graduated in 1981 with my BFA in Commercial Art from Stephen F. Austin State University.

I have always wanted to plant the love of art and music in others. Early on I opened my home studio to art and guitar students full time. I loved teaching. Many of those students are still artists today. Can you imagine how touching it is to see them follow their heart with art still a part of their lives? Some are teachers, some are moms but still painting, some of the boys excelled in music and as men are songwriters and performers.

Over the years, no matter where we moved, I painted, and I taught. With the success I had taken the risk at age 50, I am determined to continue to help others with their careers. I have always had that ‘commercial’ side in my learning curve and with the 12 years working at an advertising agency as Head Artist, I accumulated a deep amount of marketing knowledge. Of course that covers anything we do, if we want to succeed, is to learn to market ourselves, our brand you might say. It does not matter the field, it matters the brand and in art, photography, music, business, and industry, YOU are the brand.

In 2006, I became a juried member of The Daily Painters. The group was known worldwide for the next ten years. We all kept a Google Blog account, and the main Daily Painter’s site would pull each day new paintings posted on each artist’s blog. The rankings and ratings were amazing. There is truth in posting and writing daily that brings in your customers and boosts your rankings. My blog today has had over 1.5 million visitors. “https://lauriepace.blogspot.com

I have dedicated the last 20 years helping artists and clients achieve their goals. I have built custom websites for over 24 years. I work individually with each client to create a website that is not “canned’ or like any template. There are many things to consider with SEO changing constantly to keep all of us on our toes. In 2007, two friends and I started a group called the “Artists of Texas”. Over the next ten years we had 150 members, with art shows several times a year, quarterly magazines to share their studios and together enjoyed this great group of men and women working together. This was the eye-opening experience for me to help many artists with branding and marketing.

In 2012 I took another giant step to help other artists and photographers. I started a monthly magazine called Visual Language. I hosted it on “ISSUU” without ads, but after 5 years stopped production. Normally each issue was 175-225 pages. Each issue featured artists and photographers from around the world. Today you can still buy old copies at Magcloud of Visual Language Magazine. They are expensive with so many pages, but they are equal to coffee table books filled with beautiful art.

My Brand is “Elle Pace”, and every painting I have done is signed with my name L Pace and an Ithicus. My current logo is my name and an Ithicus for its design. When I do a pulled painted pony, they are branded with “The Painted Pony Collection” My other strongly branded collection is The Good People. I have painted approximately 13 large pieces of the Good People and there remains one last one on my website available for purchase. I will not be creating any others. The pieces are privately owned, but they are found on many books and publications worldwide. I started the collection in 2012 and painted the last one in 2022 and I just had it sent home from a gallery. It is 60 x 90 in size and full of wild color. Jack Johnson inspired the series. Cannot tell you how often I have listened to The Good People song!

The joy is in giving and seeing the growth with every single adventure!

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

I love the creative community of art, music, photography, and writing. The energy within creative people is amazingly strong and their strength together is a force to be contended with. For as long as mankind has played a role in this world, artists, photographers, writers, and musicians have recorded that role. Every era in our history has been recorded, defined, refined, and enhanced by the creative community, and today is no exception. Every second holds a lifetime of inspiration for each of us, and in our fast-paced world this means capturing the essence of the era requires a veritable army, millions strong and wielding their chosen implements of creation. Right now, at this moment, there are untold numbers of creatives channeling their situations, their conflicts, their passions, their grievances—their lives and the lives of those around them—into their work, transforming their energy into what matters. Using their creativity to tell the whole story.

For me being a teaching part of others finding their way to express their thoughts and talents in the changing climate and roll of our times, is like watching millions of different varieties of flowers blooming around the world.

We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.

Art and creativity in general including music and writing, helps each of us build resilience to combat our weakness, our stress, and our challenges. Throughout my lifetime I have dealt with things I did not expect that affected me deeply into psychological challenges that could have altered my life. At age 21, I was brought down by agoraphobia. I gave up driving. I hunkered down at home living a limited life. It was my faith and my art and my music, my gifts from God, that helped me navigate back into life and creativity. I completed my college degree and started my masters. I continued to model till I was 34, I worked as a commercial artist and Head Artist at an advertising firm. I taught elementary school both classroom and art, I taught middle school art and history and after that I decided to make my living with my art. I had always taught art to children from my home, but I never took painting in college because I was a commercial artist. It was a slow start for two years as I worked through the fear just painting for family and friends for commission pieces. It was in 2003 I launched with a nudge from a friend, my paintings on eBay. It took less than a year for my income to jump to $100K in 2004. In the next few years I would be invited to galleries in New York and in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. I eventually left eBay and never looked back, and I never let up. The past two years have been challenging with the first year having a breach on Facebook and a year of trying to salvage what was destroyed. The next year with health issues for my elderly mother and her passing a few months ago, I stopped painting the last year. I stopped playing the piano and my guitars. There was not time or energy. In the past few days, the nudging of painting again is tickling at my soul. I see things through different eyes after the last two years. This next year, the next 12 months will tell the tale of how far my resilience will bloom me forward in life a second time.

We must believe in our gifts and never let them go.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://ellepace.com
• Instagram: @lauriepaceartist
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/LauriePaceArtStudio
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lauriejustuspace/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/ellepacestudio
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCvXzyryy1gPXExurH1NgwRw
• Other: https://lauriepace.blogspot.com

Image Credits
Mirada Fine Art Denver Colorado Gallery Photos Steve Sonnen