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How I came to art, learned to paint, and found my voice.

Laurie Celine Balliett

Updated: 5 days ago


Jack, My Blue Eyed Cat 12" x 12" oil on board
Jack, My Blue Eyed Cat 12" x 12" oil on board


Today at the gallery, someone asked me a familiar question: “How did you learn to paint?” While responding, I realized I’ve been painting for over 35 years! I thought I’d share this journey, as some people only know me as a writer since I’ve written for numerous newspapers and magazines. One mistakenly believed I “reinvented myself” after my last reporting job ended in 2016. Another person thought I learned only from them when I took a brief class with them fifteen years ago. Someone else remarked, "Wow, you went from nothing to THIS!" referring to my sales at my current gallery. Well... those who have known me for a long time know: no, I didn't just go from "nothing to this."


So here is my story of how I came to art, learned to paint, and found my own voice.

 

I learned the fundamentals of painting in college art classes starting in 1991. In 2000, I picked up my current medium, oil painting. I intuitively picked up the palette knife and have not put it down since. Initially, I learned with acrylics, then spent several years with pastels, but settled into oil palette knife paintings. And I am always growing and learning new mediums and techniques. 


During my early college years, my best friend at the time, Michael Jordan —who I met through theater — was an amazing artist. We would spend days together and I’d watch him paint. One day, I asked if I could try painting. He suggested I take a painting class at the college, so I added it to my curriculum. During those years, we painted together regularly, and sometimes he would even paint a picture of me while I painted.


Before that, I had moved to Provincetown, Massachusetts, on Cape Cod where I worked on a whale watch boat and also returned to my first love, theater. I began taking classes at Cape Cod Community College, then transferred to Mount Holyoke College in South Hadley, MA. I later accepted a Graduate Teaching Fellowship at Colorado State University for a Master's in Philosophy with a focus on Environmental Ethics. During my philosophy studies, I painted only for fun, and I also returned to the theater arts to nourish my creative soul, which led me to work in the film industry while in grad school. 


Years before that, as a teenager, I taught myself how to paint batiks on cloth. A rebel at heart, I spent hours creating them, sometimes instead of attending high school. However, my first true love in the arts was theater. At fifteen, I had the lead role in a play at The Denver Center Theater and worked at the Denver Center for the Performing Arts throughout high school. After graduate school, I worked as an adjunct professor of philosophy, ethics, and interdisciplinary Women’s Studies for over a decade. As a perk of my job, I audited college classes in art. It was in one of those classes that I learned my current medium: oils. 


Many influences have shaped my artistic journey. I grew up with a family legend about my third great-grandfather, Jasper Francis Cropsey, who was a prominent artist of the Hudson River School. My late great-aunt, Barbara Newington, created two museums dedicated to his work in Hastings on the Hudson. Cropsey was also an architect, designing his own home, furniture, and even upholstery before becoming a fulltime artist. Knowing he was able to support himself from his plein-air paintings, I subconsciously knew that, if he could do it, I could do it, too. The museum pamphlet describes his paintings as landscapes “sometimes with evidence of human existence.” This is how I describe my own work, too. Only mine is expressionistic, impasto. 


I was lucky to spend a lot of time in New York City because my former husband grew up in Manhattan, so we had a family home there. I loved grabbing a Metropolitan Art Museum family pass and walking only a few blocks to spend hours soaking up the masters, sometimes seeing Cropsey’s work, too. All the art museums in NYC were inspirational, I especially like the Guggenheim with it’s large spiral ramp going up to each floor. We also went to galleries and studio art openings, mostly related to my former mother-in-law, Nancy Balliett, who was a pastel artist in New York City. I loved the rich colors of her work. So I picked up pastels for a few years. 


In 2000, I began working in my current medium, oils applied with a palette knife. From that point, I embraced the knife wholeheartedly. However, my real growth as a painter occurred in 2009, when I came to Taos for two weeks and stayed five months. I painted daily with fellow artists, which culminated in my work being exhibited at The Anna Karin Gallery in Truchas, NM that summer. During that time I met and painted daily with other Plein-air artists. At least two or three of us painted nearly every day, often creating two paintings a day, primarily on the High Road, Dixon, Ghost Ranch, and frequently in Taos during that winter and spring. That year, when one of the daily painters asked to see my work, he invited me to hang my pieces at the old mud church in Truchas, The Anna Karin Gallery, where he was a gallery partner that year.


I returned to Cape Cod and immediately returned to a full-time writing position. But my painting didn't disappear. I had a solo show called "High and Low Altitude Landscapes," that fall at The BrewsterLadies Library. I managed to spend a few years attending a weekly figure painting session at Paul Schulenburg's studio in Eastham, MA. I continued to plein-air paint, and I bought and renovated a cottage that was falling into the ground, and created a studio in the detached two-story garage where I could continue doing my art. A couple of years later I had a solo show at The Cape Cod National Seashore Salt Pond Visitor Center, and my art hung in Provincetown, Orleans, and Mashpee, among other places.


The light and high altitude called, and I moved to Taos full time in late 2013. In January 2019, I had a four-month solo show with 56 paintings at The Taos Inn with Taos Center for the Arts.  In February, 2020 I had another solo show on the Cape, High Altitude Landscapes of New Mexico at The Brewster Ladies Library. Then COVID arrived and reset my life.


During most of the last 30 years, I usually worked full-time jobs from working as an environmental educator, as a writer, in social services, and in higher ed, all while painting on my time off. In the years before COVID I traveled from Taos to the East Coast for my job as a High Value Real Estate Analyst on Martha's Vineyard, Boston, Vermont and Cape Cod. Tiring of the 12 hour commutes from Taos with ten days East, and ten days in Taos, I moved to Boulder for a year for this job, and then back to the Cape where I traveled to Nantucket a couple of times a week.


I returned to Taos and began painting full-time. I continue to push myself out of my comfort zone. Since then, I married, and my husband renovated the two-car garage into my dream art studio. I've taught at Ghost Ranch, and I’ve been at the Ammann Gallery and The Harwood Museum Store since 2021. The Taos Museum at the Fechin House represented me in 2022 and 2023. You can also find my work at Confluence at The Taos Ski Valley.


So this was my journey, from acrylics in college to pastels and oil paintings. I still have a long way to go, because I've only just begun! I hope to add more to this journey incrementally. Thank you for reading this and for viewing my art.



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