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

Lee, appreciate you joining us today. Have you been able to earn a full-time living from your creative work? If so, can you walk us through your journey and how you made it happen? Was it like that from day one? If not, what were some of the major steps and milestones and do you think you could have sped up the process somehow knowing what you know now?

It took me many, many years to make a living as a full-time painter. I graduated from college in 1990 with no money, student loan debt and a painting degree. I assumed I would make money as a waitress while I forged my career as a painter. I was ignoring the fact that I had little to no ability to multitask, I was a terrible waitress, and most importantly, I hated waitressing. I spent about 15 years floundering with my painting while I cycled through at least 100 different jobs just trying to keep myself afloat financially. At one point I got a teaching credential. I taught elementary school for two years. When I realized that it left me no time to paint, I gave that up. Through it all I kept painting and eventually got picked up by a small gallery outside of LA. By then the internet was becoming more widely used and my images were able to be seen by a wider audience. Evoke Contemporary, my current gallery, saw my work and asked to represent me. However, even with solid representation and steady sales I needed to supplement my income. In addition to making paintings, I now occasionally teach workshops, and I also sell prints. I found that having multiple sources of income has helped me immensely and enabled me to earn a full-time living from my creative work.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

I grew up in a small town in upstate New York. I lived in a household of all women – two older sisters and my mother (a high school art teacher). My father was not a strong presence in my life. Both grandfathers had passed away before I was born. No other male relatives lived near-by. I think the fact that I was surrounded solely by women greatly shaped my view of the world. There was no task that was delineated by gender; no task not meant for a woman to complete. Gender issues were not a huge part of my schema growing up. I am sure this has had an influence on my work.

The theme of my work is women and food. I had a decades long eating disorder and my earliest paintings discussed compulsive eating. This idea has morphed and evolved but my subject matter remains to be about women and food. The relationship women have to food is somehow central to the relationship we have to the world; our place in it and how we allow ourselves to be revealed to and within that world. So by portraying women involved in as intimate an act as eating can be, I am exploring a broader context of women’s situation.

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

I don’t know that I have one particular experience that demonstrates my resilience, but I do know that as an artist, you must have resiliency. When I am painting, I fail on a daily basis. There is always that point when I say “this is a disaster”, when frustration kicks in. I used to throw my paint brushes across the room in exasperation. I have learn over time that if I just stick with it, if I just keep going, I’ll figure it out. I think I was able to keep going all these years because I never thought there was another option for me. I never wanted to do anything but be an artist.

What do you think is the goal or mission that drives your creative journey?

I think all art is about concretizing ideas. I have an idea, a thought, a way of seeing something. Through painting I am giving that idea form so that it can be discussed. I guess my mission has always been simply to state my truth. By stating my truth I’m saying that my life and my experiences are valid. I have seen how when I express my own experience, an experience that may seem isolated or individual, it resonates with so many other people. The more personal, the more universal. I get a lot of heartfelt, often heart-rending emails from women (and occasionally men) who have been through or are going through eating disorders; emails that let me know that my work is resonating with people, alleviating some of the pain that comes with the secrecy of compulsive eating. To know that my work is having that kind of impact is priceless to me.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.leepricestudio.com
• Instagram: @leepricestudio