We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Nancy Rice Early a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Nancy, thanks for joining us today. Do you wish you had started sooner?

I have created art most of my life. For years, I created in the evenings and weekends after the full time job. I didn’t know exactly how to make enough money selling my art to quit the full time jobs. I would get in galleries, and participate in local art fairs and group shows, but the sales were few and far between.
In the mid to late 90’s, while living in California, and only a few years into my first marriage, I became extremely depressed at my job. My psyche knew I was in the wrong field (banking) and forced me to leave.
With the encouragement of my therapist, I went back to school to finish a creative degree. He encouraged me to get into a creative field that had paying jobs, so I went to Cogswell Polytechnical College (now Silicon Valley University), and learned animation, video editing and web development and design.
Animation was hard to break into, and the few intro jobs they offered started at $10/hr. I was raising 2 step sons with my husband and that just wasn’t enough.
I was able to find work teaching video editing part time, and landed jobs at startups and later, fortune 500 companies in website design and management.
I’ve had a 25 year career in the web design and usability research field all the while painting, teaching art, and having shows from time to time over the years. I’m not unhappy with the path my life has taken, as once I got into web, I made good money and it has afforded me to by lots of art supplies and rent studio space.
What I wish was that I had taken the time to promote my artwork more and find more collectors so I could have walked away from the corporate and government jobs sooner. I have tried a number of times in-between jobs and after major moves to go full time with my art. These attempts have not worked out, yet. I keep at it though. Now that I have semi-retired and only freelance in web work, I am making greater strides to get my work out in the world.
If I had been more diligent in my past with applying to galleries and shows, I may have had bigger successes. I stayed local to the areas I lived in. It is possible branching out to other areas sooner than I have would have helped make my art known better.

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 have been creating art for decades and love switching up styles and creating work in series. I have a knack with color, being playful, and showing emotion in my work. I mainly paint on canvas and paper, using watercolor, acrylic and sometimes oil. I also dabble in mosaics and embossing on tiles and wood. While I paint and teach realistic subjects such as portraits, flora, and landscapes, I also create and teach abstract and fantasy land and seascapes, and organic, emotion driven designs.
While I jump back and forth in my styles and series, I am currently working a series of fantasy underwater and landscape scenes in a pointillism style using acrylic paint pens that is colorful and playful. My purpose in this series, is to bring attention to climate change, the political climate, and the human condition using subtle symbology that isn’t always immediately apparent.
For the collector, I want them to get a painting that reminds them of a place or a feeling, and am happy to accept commissions to make a painting of their favorite place, pet or portrait of their favorite musician or family member. I want the owner of my work to find joy and/or calmness in viewing my work.
For the novice or intermediate adult student, I tailor my classes to fit their experience level and what they hope to get out of my classes. I teach realism in watercolor, working from still-life or photographs. I also teach abstract expressionism using fluid acrylic paint. It is very fulfilling when a student takes the techniques I show them and learns to loosen up and create something wholly their own.

In your view, what can society to do to best support artists, creatives and a thriving creative ecosystem?

The short answer, is buy art from living artists, the dead ones don’t need the money!
Seriously, though, there are studies that show viewing original art raises serotonin levels and lowers blood pressure. Society needs to value art as a necessity not a luxury. We need to engage artists to solve problems creatively, to put joy into the world.
Don’t buy art just to match your sofa or the color scheme of your living room. Buy art to support the years of study, the trial and error. Share in the pure joy an artist feels when they step back from a work and say, wow, how did I do that?
Creativity is a gift that comes in all forms. Don’t badmouth a piece of art because it doesn’t appeal to your aesthetics. You wouldn’t allow someone to come up to your child and call them ugly without comment. Artists are pretty sensitive folks for the most part, and their art are their children. Engage the artist or gallery owner and learn the story behind a piece.
Hire us to paint a mural down you hallway. Buy that big original to showcase your good taste. And above all else, never, never tell an artist your 5 year old could have painted that. It probably took that artist 20 years of unlearning what they were taught in art school to paint like a 5 year old again!

For you, what’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative?

The most rewarding aspect of being an artist is when someone goes wild over one of my paintings. When they fall in love with it, and just have to take it home. It makes all the effort that went into a particular piece, and in my art practice in general, all worthwhile.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://culturalyst.com/nancyearly
• Instagram: https://instagram.com/early.girl
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/earlygirldesign
• Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/nancy-early-art-studio-and-gallery-saint-louis

Image Credits

Nancy Rice Early