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

Melodie, appreciate you 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.

When I was attending Parsons School of Design in NYC, I had a very cool roommate from Staten Island, whose grandfather gave me the advice to start investing in an IRA as soon as possible. At that time you could contribute $2000 a year. I remember thinking, “Wow, in five years, I will have $10,000!” During my senior year of college, I started working part time painting costumes for The Phantom of the Opera under the mentorship of Bryan Kollman, who also worked doing the windows at Saks 5th Avenue. Bryan got me a freelance job at Saks, which became my primary livelihood for the next 10 years. During that time, I paid back my student loan and started contributing $2000 a year to my IRA. I was incredibly intimidated about doing my own taxes, so Bryan gave me the name of his accountant, who also encouraged me to make the maximum contribution to my retirement account. At that time, I didn’t take any risk at all by putting the money into a CD (certificate of deposit) at the bank. As time went on I learned more about the stock market. I invested in some mutual funds and started buying shares of individual stocks. A friend of mine encouraged and helped me open an online trading account. Investing in stocks was a risk that I’m glad I took. I have made mistakes, but overall I have come out far ahead of where I would be if I hadn’t invested at all. My goal was and remains to be financially independent so that I can spend my days making art instead of worrying about money to pay bills. Fortunately, through the creative work I found in NYC, doing windows, painting showrooms for fashion companies and commissioned projects, my own artistic practice was enriched, and I was able to make the money to pay my bills and invest what was left over. Currently, I have moved to the countryside of TN, where my overhead is a fraction of what it was in NYC, and I am able to afford myself as much time as I would like for my own art projects, without the worry of my creations needing to sell in order to survive, because I took the risk in investing my earnings over 20 years ago and that money grew into a cushion to fall back on if I need it.

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

I love being creative and getting into the flow of doing things that I enjoy, like painting and making music. After graduating from Parsons School of Design, I freelanced as an artist in NYC for 20 years, doing window displays, painting showrooms and other commissioned projects for companies including Saks Fifth Avenue, Ferragamo, Hermes, Hugo Boss, Louis Vuitton, Donna Karan and Chanel. These jobs were fun, and I learned a lot about materials and techniques, like faux painting, gold leafing and working on a large scale with deadlines. Now that I have saved money and moved to Tennessee, where the cost of living is less expensive than Manhattan, I am affording myself the time to focus on making fine art and music. When I was in my twenties, I would dream about having the time to work on whatever fancied me, and now I am living that dream. My paintings have been described as hyper real, which is a result of directly observing and focusing on an object and refining my depiction of it on canvas or paper. When the thing I’m painting starts to look as though it has space and air around it, like it’s popping off of the canvas, I get excited. I love giving people that amazement of looking at something that is flat with only two dimensions and feeling like it could be three dimensional. I’m thrilled by the work I am currently creating in my studio. I’ve started making one hour paintings of gift bows on a one to one scale, that force me to loosen up my natural tendency to execute every detail meticulously. I focus so intensely on bringing the bow to life in one hour that my mind is in what seems to be a magical place. It’s a marvelous state of concentration, and I learn so much about what I’m painting that I apply to the much larger works of art. I’m currently working on three foot by three foot paintings each depicting a different color gift bow, of which I have previously done at least ten of the one hour paintings. A series of 8 foot by 8 foot paintings of objects floating in timeless, infinite space are also in the works. These paintings are like entering the unknown for me, because I can’t set up a still life of the vision I’m creating and directly paint what I am seeing. It’s necessary for me to use my imagination and other source materials. For example, photographs are useful for painting animals, who even if I had them in my studio to look at, wouldn’t sit still. It’s all very much a labor of love. I’m also enjoying making music these days. One of the first things I bought for myself when I started working and making money was a four track for recording music. I would do window display during the day at Saks Fifth Avenue and come home to paint or record music. I made cassette tapes under the pseudonym of Connie Acher and would give them to my friends. One of my friends, Jack Wingate, had a record store and a label called Flipped Out Records. He put out 200 copies of my first vinyl lp called Love Sick Lip Service back in the 90s. I continued to make music and have records released. My last record to date is “For Giving”, which I have recently been giving away at the shows I have performed here in Nashville. The good times are rolling for me!

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

I had to pivot in my creative life, when my husband and I decided to try to have a baby. I shifted from working 12 hours a day on creative projects to working on getting pregnant and creating a healthy baby. I eliminated using materials that I thought might be harmful, like house paints with VOC’s. I quit drinking coffee. I watched what I ate and took vitamins. I was forty years old, so it wasn’t unusual that the first two times I actually got pregnant, I miscarried. The third time was a charm, and my husband and I welcomed our healthy son into the world when I was 42. I went from being a seriously driven ambitious artist to learning how to have a more well rounded life, in which art was not the sole focus. I breast fed and said no to commercial painting jobs. In 2020, when our son was 4, we moved out of Manhattan to outside of Nashville in the countryside of TN. Our son is in 1st grade now, so I have the whole day while he is in school to make work, and then I greet him when he gets off of the bus. My husband and I read books to him and fall asleep with him. We wake up super early in the morning with him and get him on the school bus before the sun has risen. Being “the mom” part of a loving family has helped me to slow down and enjoy other things in life besides making art.

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

Just one? LOL, which one shall I choose? It was my last year at Parsons School of Design, and an art dealer spotted my paintings at the senior exhibition. This dealer contacted me, and we had a conversation on the phone. Half of the conversation sounded amazing and the other half was peppered with red flags that made me feel skeptical that I should work with this person. At the time, no one else was knocking on my door wanting to sell my fine art, so against my better judgement I made a date to meet and consign paintings to the dealer. Long story short, over several years I consigned a multitude of paintings and drawings to this dealer, practically everything I had created up until that moment. Finally, I decided I could no longer work with this person and asked for my 51 unsold artworks in their possession to be returned to me, including “Ballerina and Bugs” a large painting of which I was particularly fond. The dealer refused to give me my work back. After a court battle ensued and my lawyer became too expensive for me to see it through to the end, I gave up. I walked away from fighting to get the artwork back, and eventually let go of all of the anger I felt about losing my work to this person. To this day I have no idea what this dealer is doing with all of that artwork I made in my 20s and early 30s. It doesn’t even matter. I’m grateful for the invaluable lesson that I learned from that dealer, which is to only work with people with whom you really feel good about working. If you see red flags, don’t ignore them. Trust your good judgement over your ambition for worldly success.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://melodieprovenzano.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/melodieprov/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/melodie-provenzano-a0345b34/