We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Paula P. Ogden a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Paula P., thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today We’d love to hear about when you first realized that you wanted to pursue a creative path professionally.

Although I had my first gallery exhibitions of my trapunto art when I was just nineteen years old, I recall the desire to create really set in when an interior designer who had had a faux finishing business, gave me a tour of her home in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Almost every surface was faux. The concrete floor in the entry was painted to look like marble, a door to look like beautiful inlaid wood, a kitchen backsplash to look like hand-painted tiles, an aged leather trunk which was really vinyl, a vase painted to mimic an expensive one, and the walls with their beautiful aged plaster finishes, all faux! I was amazed and enthralled. I went home determined to teach myself the many techniques involved with faux finishing and set out by starting on the walls of my own home. While at first my execution was rudimentary, my attempts did not go unnoticed and admirers asked me to paint the walls of their homes. My efforts gained traction and before I knew it I had created a business, painting residential and commercial properties, with murals, marble and aged finishes, patinas, trompe l’oeil, and more! My painting was not just limited to walls either, I painted floor cloths, custom iron stair cases and fixtures, furniture, I even painted the sink in Francis Ford Coppola’s jet plane to look like marble.

My mind has a tendency to be on overdrive, so I really loved that my new business allowed me to try many different techniques, on different surfaces and in different settings. It was perfect for me and thus the embers took flame, developing into the mixed media painting that I do now.

Paula P., 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?

Hi, I’m Paula Ogden, a native “Hoosier”, born in Lafayette, Indiana, 57 years ago. It wasn’t my only home, you see, my Mother is from Northern New Mexico, and growing up I used to spend entire summers there with my Grandparents. They had a ranch with cattle and horses. It was a small ranch, but a ranch no less, with a girl’s dream come true: horses. I would ride as often as my Grandpa would saddle the horses and his time would allow. Other times, I would go down to the river, hike up the hills behind the river, or go visit a cousin. I had many cousins. I am a eighth generation Trujillo/Quintana, so I had a lot of family in the area. 

One of my favorite things to do while visiting New Mexico, was to go to my Uncle Jake and Aunt Bell’s Centinela Ranch in Chimayo. My uncle was a renowned weaver, and he patiently taught me the art. I’d spend hours in his quiet studio, learning to count threads, adjust tension, and finally, the thrill of cutting my finished piece off the loom.

I did not take art classes in high school back in Indiana, I did, however, take Home Ec, where I discovered “trapunto”. Trapunto, originated around the fourteenth century in Sicily and is a form of quilting using two layers of cloth sewn together with a design. The design is then stuffed from the backside by making little slits into the fabric, stuffing in between the design’s stitches. This can be done with batting, as well as, thick and thin yarn. The quilted and stuffed fabric was then used in clothing and for decorative purposes.

Encouraged by an artist friend of my mom’s, I created a large trapunto of a tiger lily for my final Home Ec project, and stretched it over a frame to hang on the wall. To my surprise, this art form led to my first gallery exhibition at the age of 19! While this was an innovative art form that I loved, I found I needed a more reliable source of income, so I put my art interests on the back burner for a time.

​A few years later, I attained my Associates in Liberal Arts with a heavy
emphasis on Visual Arts. It was during this time, while on a trip to New Mexico, I became acquainted with a member of the New Mexico Interior Design Board, who had had a faux finishing business. She gave me a tour of her home to see some of her work. I was amazed to discover that almost every surface of her home was faux finished. Inspired, I went home and attempted my first faux finishing in my family room. It seems those New Mexican summers sparked something within me. From there, friends began asking me to paint their homes and this flourished into a faux finishing (a.k.a. decorative painting) business. I continued this business for fourteen years, but congenital fusions in my cervical spine caused me to give my business up.

Interestingly, I then went to work for my youngest daughter’s school district as a paraprofessional, which eventually led to translating an Honors student’s learning materials into Braille. This included creating and labeling tactile graphics for the student. Perhaps it was my affinity to art, that made learning Braille easier.

After transcribing for this student up to his graduation, my husband and I remodeled the upstairs, turning one of the bedrooms into a studio. It was February of 2019, and as timing would have it, Covid hit and so did stay-at-home orders, so I signed up for an online mixed-media art course, and I remember by husband saying, “I’m never going to see you again, am I?” While others were going stir crazy, I was happy for the excuse to do nothing else but create. Two years later, I had my first solo exhibition in Indiana, with over 50 pieces on display.

I work primarily with fluid acrylics, alcohol inks, crackle and molding pastes, gold leaf, gold and silver foils, resin, and the cyanotype printmaking process. The cyanotype process is the original blueprint making process or camera-less photography, which results in the characteristic deep blue color. It is achieved by coating a paper’s surface with a two part mixture of iron salts and then exposing it to ultra violet light.

I like to combine different mediums together, hence the term, “mixed media”. I work on different substrates: canvas, cradled wood panels, and synthetic watercolor and other various art papers. I like color and texture and I’ve been called the “Crackle Queen”, because I will often use crackle pastes somewhere in my work.

​I have also been called “prolific”. Creating many styles of art, I continuously have multiple works progressing in different stages. I like creating this way, because depending on how much time I have, or what I feel or don’t feel like working on, I can choose my project accordingly.

​When I started painting again in 2019, I would work on one project at a time, which would sometimes cause me to overwork a piece or “ruin” it. I had to learn to set a piece aside while I was still in that “LOVE IT” stage, a task made much easier by having multiple pieces to work on. In addition, with multiple projects in progress, I am less fixated on any one given piece, which allows for more creativity. I have also learned that there are no mistakes, only opportunities to push myself further. Art is a process; it comes with its ups and downs and struggles too, but if you trust the process and stick with it, a connection happens, and love ensues.

My passion to embrace the process, has created in me a deep desire to share my processes, to help other creatives and artists overcome their fears by teaching them everything from prepping your substrates to how to photograph your art in my bi-weekly newsletters, which also include supply lists and video tutorials. I’m also excited to announce I will be launching my first online FREE WORKSHOP coming late February of 2025, as well as an online paid cyanotype course, later in June of 2025.
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My work exemplifies my relationship with the process of creating. Here you will see the many techniques I have learned throughout the years. I hope that you will appreciate the combination of various mixed media techniques and diverse materials I employ in my creations, and that you, too, will explore and embrace the creative side within yourself.

Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?

Yes I can. Currently I am recovering from extensive shoulder repair surgery performed early November of 2024 on my dominant right arm. My surgery involved rotator cuff repair, repair of extreme tears to my bicep muscle and two tendons as well as bone spurs removed.

My friends and family asked me how I would handle recovery. “What about your painting?”, they asked. I told them I would take the opportunity to work on launching my first online workshop which would involve; editing video, setting everything up on my website for the course, marketing, etc., and, I would be trying my left hand at painting abstracts during my recovery.

Consistency is key to social media marketing, so the day after surgery, I was creating reels and posting to my social media sites. The following week, I sent out my bi-weekly newsletter to my email subscribers. At seven weeks into recovery however, I fell onto my affected arm.

Feeling discouraged, I needed a pick me up and that meant I needed to paint. Now was definitely the time! Painting has always taken my mind off of my worries and pain. It lifts me up, it makes me feel good. I had my husband carry up some large canvases into my studio and wearing my sling, I began to paint. Nine days later, I had five completed paintings ranging in size from 36”x36” to 4”x4”, named my “Left-Handed Series”.

I still have a lot of work to do for my online workshop, but I’m working on it and guess what? I feel better and being forced to use my left hand has caused my right hemisphere to grow in the process! A win, win, if you ask me. That old saying, “where there’s a will, there’s a way”, works for me every time!

How did you build your audience on social media?

Consistency is key, which means posting to my page or stories everyday. Not only does this remind them I’m here, but I think it shows my audience I am reliable and dependable. I like to mix things up when I post, sometimes showing photos of my work, but mostly I do a short reel everyday. It’s a time-consuming task and sometimes, I’ll admit, I would like a day off, but it’s worth it. I’m giving my audience a taste of what I have to offer because I am preparing to launch a free online workshop late February 2025, and then subsequently, a paid online course, mid-June 2024.

I feel another important key to building your audience on social media is by engaging with your audience. I do this by responding genuinely to my followers’ messages, liking, following, and encouraging other artists and creatives on their posts as well, and by simply being supportive and helpful whenever I can.

In addition to posting on social media everyday, I also publish a bi-weekly newsletter. it’s always loaded with great tips, supply lists, and full length video tutorials. To some it may seem I am “giving away the cow”, but I don’t think so. There are so many products out there, techniques to be learned, and little tips to be given, that I could teach continually and still, never give up the cow, LOL. I look at it as cultivating and empowering my audience. I’m giving them a foundation to build on, and preparing them for my paid courses. I also want my readers to keep coming back for more and what better way to do that than to provide them with great content! I must be doing something right with my subscribers, because I have a higher than industry standard engagement rate of 60 to 70%! Yay!

Another helpful way to build your audience is to join groups of like-minded individuals or professionals. This can be done through social media “groups” or groups in person and engaging there as well. If you’re an alcohol ink artist, join groups with other alcohol ink artists, for example. I was fortunate to have been asked to be moderator in a Facebook group for an artist who has a much larger following than me. I acquired this responsibility by showing my work within the group, by asking questions and answering other’s questions when I knew the correct answer, and by encouraging other participants. Naturally, I formed friendships and gained authority within the group, which eventually led to new followers.

You may not participate on social media or have a newsletter, or a blog or belong to any like-minded groups, but if you can focus on taking just one action toward your goal everyday, you’ll get there and hopefully, you’ll have built some great relationships along the way.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.paulaogdensart.com
• Instagram: @paulaogdensart
• Facebook: https://facebook.com/paulaogdensart

Image Credits

Paula P. Ogden, Paula Ogden’s Art