We were lucky to catch up with Mike & Jime Wimmer recently and have shared our conversation below.
Mike & Jime, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. We’d love to hear about when you first realized that you wanted to pursue a creative path professionally.
(Mike) Choosing to be an artist is like choosing to be born…you really don’t have much control over it. It is what awakens me, it is my inspiration, it is the standard by which I measure my success and happiness. As an artist all my life, I gained my first recognition at the age of 11 when I won a contest in Hot Rod Cartoon Magazine, “Draw the Hottest 18 Wheeler” contest and received a check for $50.00. I began selling my art in galleries and art shows at the age of 14 and started my professional illustration career while working my way through college at the University of Oklahoma. So, of course there have been challenges, the biggest one is how to find the way to finance my habit…how to find those who are willing to share their hard-won resources with me so that I can create something that we both recognize as having true value. My greatest obstacles have been my own standards. They force me to take the “hard road” steep and slippery with self-doubt, giant boulders of despair and fatigue that must be overcome or worked around, and often through unknown territory, where I am the one responsible for cutting my own path.
(Jime) I’ve been creative since I could hold tools. I’ve always been a creative spirit that can’t help but find visual solutions and bring new life to a blank piece of paper. The creative life chose me more or less. I didn’t take it seriously as a means of a career however. I have had many obstacles in my life that have prevented me from being serious as an artist, as I’ll explain later.
Mike & Jime, 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?
(Mike) I have had the honor of working for some of the largest companies in the world, including Disney, Proctor and Gamble, RJR Nabisco, Kimberly Clark, Celestial Seasons, Hasbro, Milton Bradley, Smuckers, American Airlines, and have painted over 300 covers for almost every major publisher in the United States, as well as creating more than 13 Children’s Books. As a nationally recognized portraitist, I have had the honor of painting the portraits of some of America’s most prestigious citizens and I have been recognized as “Oklahoma’s Greatest Artist” by Oklahoma historian Bob Burke, with the distinction of having more than 40 historical paintings and portraits hanging in the Oklahoma State Capitol Building. So I had built a pretty good career as an artist by the time I met my wife Jime. In 2008 while studying for an additional art degree, at the University of Hartford in Connecticut I met Jime and recognized a kindred spirit of creativity and passion and soon fell head over heels in love. In 2013 we decided to share our lives together and share a commitment to artistic exploration, teaching, traveling, and working out together. We moved to Savannah to teach at the prestigious Savannah College of Art and Design in 2017.
(Jime) As professional artists we share a love for nature and the mountains and share a love and passion for myths, legends and fairy tales. I suppose it is the love of “Make Believe” and living in a world of our own creation. As teachers, we strive to inspire our students to discover their own unique “Voice” and equip them with the skills that give relevance to that “Voice”. I’ve been an educator for a variety of ages for the past 17 years, and Mike and I both share a passion for connecting with other rising artists and being a part of their support system in self esteem, guidance and growth. Young people truly today need a network to find success and it doesn’t have to be a lonely solo-journey as it was for us growing up.
Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?
(Jime) My journey to my current career has been quite a ride. I started as an energetic artist with a passion for various things, ranging from music to sports, but art held a special place in my heart. Following high school, I enrolled in a program at a local college, Keystone College, setting the foundation for my path. Those two years and an AFA degree marked a significant chapter in my life, even though it was a small community junior college at the time.
In 1996, I earned acceptance to the prestigious School of Visual Arts in NYC. However, the financial challenges of a 20-year-old living independently forced me to decline the offer. I found myself working at a local paper-making factory with Procter and Gamble for a rough nine years, enduring a 12-hour swing shift for most of that time.
Life brought its twists—I married, had my firstborn son, navigated a challenging divorce, and remarried. Despite the hurdles, I decided to reignite my artistic journey at Keystone, this time in their Art Education program. The college supported me from the outset, and in my first semester back, I discovered I was expecting my second son. Juggling a full-time job, raising my 5-year-old, and attending courses while pregnant proved challenging. After giving birth, I began student teaching with the unwavering support of my second husband, who also helped me navigate quitting my job at P&G—an intimidating move. The sacrifices paid off when I graduated with my sons and family by my side, stepping into a full-time teaching role at a local high school that fall.
Yet, my ambitions didn’t stop there. Long ago, I dreamt of becoming an illustrator but missed the chance to delve deeper. Determined, I embarked on an MFA in Illustration. This decision strained some relationships, leading to an amicable second divorce. However, it also paved the way to meeting my third (and final!) husband, Mike, who shares my passion for illustration. We graduated together with our MFA’s from Hartford University, and soon after, we both began teaching at the college level.
Currently, I’m juggling several book projects while working at SCAD. My teaching portfolio spans storyboarding, inventing environments, character design, and drawing classes, encompassing both traditional and digital mediums. Life has been a rollercoaster, but I wouldn’t trade it for anything. I have faced many people in my life encouraging me to ‘settle’, ‘give up’ or ‘be happy’…but my nature is to always dream bigger and aspire to inspire. Teaching offers me options: I get to choose what I draw and create and I find great happiness in that freedom. However, my hardest times come from when I suffer a loss in my classrooms. Every student’s joy and pain has taught me that life is both resilient and fragile. Getting a degree didn’t make me a good teacher, experiencing the hardships I faced is what gave me a voice in a classroom. I can connect with my students in many ways that all help us become better creatives.
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?
(Mike) I think so many believe that it is impossible or at the very least, difficult to make a living as an artist. I’m lucky enough to see this situation from the vantage point of having a successful career, so it’s easier for me to understand their reticence in choosing to be an artist as a career. As the Distinguished Artist in Residence and Chair of the Art Department at Oklahoma City University, I had the opportunity to speak with many parents about the realities of their child making a living as an artist. I was conversing with one father during a recruiting visit to our school when I told him directly, “I wouldn’t waste our limited resources on offering his daughter a scholarship, if I wasn’t sure that she had what it takes to be successful”. Notice I didn’t say, “As an artist”. I went on further to say that it is difficult to make a living as an artist. It is also difficult to make a successful career as a Lawyer, I offered the fact that only 51% of students who graduate law school make a living as or practice law. I also said it’s difficult to make a living as a plumber, a teacher, or a Petroleum Engineer. I didn’t know it until I saw his face and demeanor fall, that he then agreed, saying that he had just been laid off from a very large Oil firm. I asked him, “did he think that his career was over with?” He replied that “No” he was pretty sure that he could find other work. And I then said, “That tenacity and Will, as well as his daughter’s inherent abilities and desire were exactly the requirements that assured me that his daughter was worthy of the offer of a scholarship, and why I thought she would be successful as an artist. Making a living is just about earning enough money to pay bills and meet your financial responsibilities, but being an artist is of greater stuff. It is to be equal with god. To take an unformed spark of an idea, and then to bring it into existence with your mind and your abilities for the whole world to witness and experience. Building a career is just doing this repeatedly throughout a lifetime.
(Jime) Non-creatives have different journey’s but we aren’t all that different from one another. I’m going to reflect on the non-career part, as I’ve worn many various aprons. I don’t make art commercially, and I’m limited in clients; however, drawing is akin to breathing for me. There’s an inner trust that has to be nurtured inside for everyone. For artists however, what we carry inside, is often displayed on the outside, and there’s judgement by the world. That’s often the only difference. Writers observe the world and bring us their words for the world to think. Actors portray our emotions and struggles with their skills for us to feel. Dancers express the deepest emotional capacity through their physical prowess for a limited time and moment, and artists see what is in their imagination and around them in the world, and then create art only to listen to opinions of others. I truly believe every human has a need to express themselves, and in recent years this brings us to social media soapboxes. But wouldn’t the world be more beautiful if we could take the painful distress and transform it into a creative body of work instead? The ARTS also teach us that we all can EXPERIENCE great joy and satisfaction in the art of ‘doing’….not just the resulting product itself.
Contact Info:
- Website: wimmerstudios.com mikewimmerportraits.com mikewimmer.com prettylines.com
- Instagram: @wimmerswoods @myprettylines @wimmerartist
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mike.wimmer1
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mike-wimmer-inc/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/jime-wimmer/
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@wimmerart/videos
Image Credits
All images copyrighted by Mike and Jime Wimmer.