Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Sabrina Siebert. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.
Hi Sabrina, thanks for 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?
I began painting six years ago at age 32 as a hobby. I’m now three years into being a professional, which for me means I apply and and am admitted into at least 6-8 shows a year, I’ve bought and paid off all the necessary supplies and equipment to attend these shows (cargo trailer, show tent, display panels, frames, etc), and I am able to dedicate just enough hours during the week to produce a steady supply of new pieces. I do LOOK like I’m making a full time living. However I FEEL like I’m part-time dying because of all the extra shit I have to do to fund this slow-moving and financially cringey undertaking.
Yes, I make enough to at least break even. Yes, business is improving a little every year. Yes I am optimistic that I’ll be a respected and high-earning artist at some point down the road. But this excruciating limbo stage is the one you really need to hear about if you’re interested in this line of work…
I got started late. I’m 38 as we speak and live in my childhood home in very rural Texas with my mother, my husband and our two year old daughter. You can read how I ended up here in the next section of this interview. But for now, here’s what my typical day looks like: get up at 2:00 am, try to creep downstairs without waking my kid, sit down in what used to be our dining room which is now my studio and paint until 7:00 am when baby wakes up. Snuggle her, put her in bed with her dad to watch cartoons for an hour, try to finish one more hour of painting while husband wanders in and out singing and banging on piano. Feed dogs, visit with mom, clean house, play with kid, clean more house, do lunch, play with kid, nap with kid. Get up 3 pm, play outside with kid while trying to do yard work. Or drive 40 mile round trip to Wal-Mart for groceries. Get a shock when I realize it’s 6 pm and time for dinner, bath, visit with mom, visit with husband, feed dogs again and bedtime stories by 8:30. Skip two am wakeup because I am too tired to do it two days in a row. Every Tuesday I drive an hour to work at the cafe in a cattle sale barn which is my only steady job. I also help my husband buying and selling auction cars without which I could not afford to do the art stuff.
I maybe average 20-30 hours a week painting at this rate. It stresses me out no end because I like to undertake really big ambitious projects that require long stretches of intense concentration and sometimes they sit unattended for months while I do life stuff or focus on churning out a dozen little paintings because those sell and the big ones don’t.
This is what happens when you f**k around meandering aimlessly through your 20s and drink and dabble with drugs and try to live the life of a tortured artist when you are really a quite privileged young person doing nothing creative whatsoever. I knew I had talent at that age just no focus or discipline or any idea how to use it. I could be out of this limbo stage by now and twelve years further ahead in my career if I’d started then instead of now. And because my time with my kid is as important to me as my biggest personal ambitions, I’m stuck having to work ten times harder and at much odder hours to have my career and not interfere with that relationship.
But you CAN do it. I am doing it. And because I have a great family I have a lot of help. Although its fun to complain, mine is very much a first-world problem and in no way comparable to other actual struggles of humanity. Maybe that’s what I’m trying to articulate here, if it’s a life lesson you’re wanting from me. For most of us, pursuing a goal is exhuasting and uncomfortable but not REALLY that bad, and is likely to remain that way for years before you ever get your desired amount of Instagram followers. It’s not impossible to get started in middle age with children, but a lot better when you’re young and single. There you go, just common sense.
Sabrina, 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?
Come, lean in closer while I tell you of my amazing journey; I left small town Texas at 18 to attend the University of Southern California to try and become a screenwriter. I did not become that. After I graduated I went to Special FX Makeup school. Became a makeup artist but not for long. Finally, I settled and for about ten years between 2009-2018, I had a successful job as a fabricator in the specialty costume industry in Los Angeles. A life full of bizarre celebrity encounters, good steady paychecks, global travel and just basic job sex appeal that make your friends jealous when you go back home for Christmas. But in reality, the hours were slavish and long, there was nothing creative about the work, and it is really wicked expensive to live in LA. I was depressingly lonely and did nothing but go to the gym and drink too much on weekends. Plus the chemicals I was working with were making me slowly sicker and sicker.
Around 2017 my 85 year old dad started going downhill and I began coming home more and more. My hometown sits in a triangle of dilapidated little Texas communities, two hours from any real civilization. It contains 295 other souls besides myself. Couldn’t have been more of a reverse culture shock, but I immediately found myself sleeping better, laughing more and slipping away to hike into the surrounding Texas wilderness every free moment I could. Over the next two years I made the move permanent and found myself the butt of every millennial joke; 34 and living at home with my parents again.
My mother is a phenomenal artist and I used to love painting as a kid so she got me started again at home. I began experimenting and appreciated for the first time the skills I picked up in my years of fabricating; ageing and dying leather, paint techniques like metal, patinas, texture, age, sculpting, mold making, tool use, and most importantly, a ravenous desire to put these skills to use for my own creative ends instead of some anonymous designer’s.
To make money I started bartending at the little local beer joint called Sullivan’s County Line. Please picture a 10’x20’ barn red shack sagging alone on the side of the highway on the border between our dry county and the wet one next door. I served like ten local cowboys exclusively and before long we had a nice rapport. They knew I loved animals and painting so would bring me cow skulls or whatever decently intact roadkill they found that day and leave them on the ice machine for me before work. I decorated the skulls and taxidermied the roadkill, handed out beer, painted and painted and painted and helped out at home…that pretty much was my life for the next couple years.
In February of 2020 I took the trip I had saved diligently for; my adventure of a lifetime to Madagascar to volunteer working with sea turtles on a desert island. While I was there, Covid gobsmacked the entire planet and to put it mildly, I had a very difficult time getting home. In that same year I lost my father but met my now husband. It was a strange time. But through it all I kept painting and in October of 2021 I was accepted into my first professional show: Art Worth at the Will Rogers Coliseum.
I paint wildlife. I am still finding out what my style is, but it always features animals and excludes people. I spent a lot of time in India and Asia though my work in the costume industry and the fabulous colors and patterns of those cultures stuck in my head. They come out in my work in all kinds of ways even years later. However I’m feeling more and more a strong pull towards the Western. It’s in my blood and I’m surrounded by it where I now live. Leather patterns and texture, beadwork, native weaving, saddlery, tribal symbols; all those elements from East and West are starting to show up in the paintings I’m doing now. It’s developing into something very interesting and I’m excited to take it further.
My end goal is to eventually find a way to make enough money to turn some proceeds from my artwork into charity projects that benefit local pets and wildlife. There is a serious need in these rural towns for good spay/neuter programs, more shelters and humane hog control. There is also a sad lack of arts and culture education in our schools. I have no idea how I’m going to do it yet, but I would like to marry an arts program for kids with a benefit for local animals.
Looking back, are there any resources you wish you knew about earlier in your creative journey?
Being so much older when I started, I already had a lot of life hacks up my sleeve. Facebook Marketplace and Craigslist to buy used items at MUCH lower cost were probably the most useful tools. Also, I started with cheap Wal-Mart paint and brushes to train on, and find that I still mostly use those today even though my skills have greatly improved. My best work was made with the most inexpensive materials and people are none the wiser. The skill is what makes the art, not the medium.
Zapplication.com is THE database of nationwide art shows for anyone getting started. You go there, select what shows you want to apply to and the website walks you through it.
Frames are really expensive. Amazon has some good, cheap, smaller size options, but teach yourself how to make a basic frame for your work if you’re a painter. It’s an invaluable skill. I don’t even do wood work, I just have my husband help me cut four 3” or 4” wide trim boards, fit them around the painting like a frame and take the time to decorate it with an elaborate design. Works out great.
Rhinestones, gold leaf, imitation turquoise, all these things can really add life to a painting and are cheap to buy on Amazon. I guess my work is technically mixed media because I always try and add at least one of these elements. It’s maybe a little garish for some, but I love it and at least no one is ever bored by my work.
I do a whole line of abstract horse paintings that are lightly sculpted in relief with joint compound from the hardware store. It’s a also great material to play with.
How about pivoting – can you share the story of a time you’ve had to pivot?
Well I think you got the story of my big life pivot already, from LA back to TX, from costume shop monkey to self-made struggling artist. The thing about pivots is, you have to be ready to do them again. And again. I anticipate with the world changing fast as it is, there’ll be other pivots coming fast down the pipeline. Don’t ever get comfortable.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.toothandfang.com
- Instagram: @siebert.sabrina
