Meet the Artist
Hello, I am Angela, the artist behind Clark Fine Art. This page is all about my journey to now.
When did my Art journey begin?
Thanks for asking. Like many, I have had a love of art as long as I can remember, but have only recently begun focusing all of my efforts into doing my art as a full time career. So when did my journey begin? It might have been when I was watching Bob Ross, with my dad on PBS as a young child. I was always fascinated by what he did and knew I wanted to be able to do that. Around that same time, I received some art supplies as a gift, which helped to spark a life long desire to learn and grow my skills as an artist. I chose art classes in school growing up and explored many different mediums. One of my favorite was photography and mastering composition. As a freshman in high school, I had some of my work on display at an exhibit in the local Children’s Museum of Science. I believe it was this love of capturing the world in images that led to my desire to create realistic art in paintings and drawings.
I pursued college a bit later than most and while doing so, art took a back seat and remained in hobby status, because after all, who could afford to be a “starving artist” while attending college and lets face it, it was much harder a couple decades ago to break into the art world, let alone make it big. However, creativity did remain a constant even in college. I knew I wanted to create things and eventually achieved my Master of Arts degree, graduating Summa Cum Laude as the Valedictorian of my class, concentrating on New Media, and content creation. I had also received an MBA, summa cum laude degree in Marketing, prior. What this boiled down to was a lot of schooling and little time focusing on my art.
Caution Curves Ahead
Then as life does it throws us curves. As I was pursuing my degrees, I ended up getting ill. Turns out, after years of doctors visits and wondering what was going on, I received a diagnosis of fibromyalgia, on top of the depression from being sick for so long. The illness kept me from working in any traditional setting and gaining that all important on the job experience fresh out of school. Years later, once I had my illness where I could manage it better, it was decision time again. What do you do when you have had a large gap in employment history and a ton of education you want to put to work, but have a chronic illness that could interrupt your work at anytime? Who was going to hire me when a potential flare up could put me right back out of work? Of course if a company could overlook the potential for my illness impacting my ability to work, there was also the situation where either I needed more job experience, or my education had me overqualified for the position.
Enter the phase of reflection.
Fortunately for me during all of this I had a very supportive husband, who was also able to support our household. However, I was tired of not working, very bored day after day with nothing to do and found this was only leading to more depression. I decided if breaking back into the traditional job market wasn’t in the cards (living in rural Maine didn’t make things any easier), I wasn’t going to let that stop me. Loving where I live also meant moving for work was not an option. So I began to think about what I would love to do if I could do anything? What skills do I have, and how could I turn that into a career I can be passionate about? I needed some good old Mainah ingenuity.
You Didn’t Come this Far Only to Go This Far!
You Can Get There From Here
I knew I loved art, I had always found my way back to sketching and drawing over the years and when my fibromyalgia kept me from going to work, I discovered a love for acrylic and later watercolor painting. Like a sponge I had sought out every “how to” I could to help me learn more about the mediums. I was always happy when I was creating. I was doing more and more art for myself and as gifts for family members, and to donate to fundraisers and silent auctions, to help the local area. I had even spent time teaching others in a one-on-one setting, which I thoroughly enjoyed.
I realized, I had always loved teaching. Looking back, I ran study groups in my academic career, worked as a clinical supervisor for a college I attended after getting an undergrad degree and was even offered a teaching position after achieving my Master of Arts degree, if I didn’t mind relocating to Florida. As I said, I love where I live and couldn’t leave Maine, not even for something that was, at the time, a dream job for me. During my process of figuring out my next step, multiple people, friends and family had encouraged me to teach art and hold classes locally. This sparked my interest because it combined my love for art and teaching.
I always found it most rewarding when you could unlock a subject for a student who was struggling and present it in a way they could easily understand. I could not ignore my own education though, how would teaching art also take advantage of my own education? I had to know that all my hard work was for something other than accolades and a few fancy pieces of paper to hang on a wall.
It’s All Coming Together Now
Thats when the idea for Clark Fine Art was born. I realized I could incorporate my education for content creation, New Media, and Marketing and use them to create my brand and do what I love by teaching others and passing on the knowledge I have obtained, while still creating my own artwork to sell. So I began launching all of the Clark Fine Art social media.
It’s been a while since I officially launched Clark Fine Art and I have had a few bumps along the way. Complications from the Covid vaccine and later Covid itself created more health issues I now deal with. However, I am happy to be feeling better and am back to creating. I hope that if you like my work or benefit from the knowledge I share, that you will support my content, like, share, pass it on, or maybe even become a patron so that I can grow, keep creating and reach as many people as possible that might need help beginning their own artistic journey.
Thanks for your time getting to know my story. I encourage you to never stop learning or believing that your dreams are possible. The only difference between you and the successful artists you follow is practice and failure, because without both of them success is not possible. Be brave enough to know that if you fail it’s ok, you just need to try one more time because success is possible and it’s waiting for you. I believe in you and your ability to achieve that which you set out to do and look forward to helping you discover you can create beautiful works of art.
Best wishes,
Angela
Clark Fine Art
And that my friends brings us to now, welcome to the next phase of my journey. Thanks for joining me along the way.
Two roads diverged in a wood and I – I took the one less traveled by, and it has made all the difference.
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