Today’s Artist Interview Is With Victoria Ryan From Eureka, California

Whopple: How long have you been an artist?
Victoria: All my life really. I had a conscious drive and awareness that I could draw well at about age 9. I followed through with my intention to become an artist and earned my B.F.A. in Painting and Drawing in 1983. I’ve been a professional artist since then.

Whopple: Tell us about your first attempts to be creative.
Victoria: My dad had his shirts professionally laundered and I would appropriate the cardboard stiffeners as a drawing surface as a young child. I mainly drew people in those early attempts but later started drawing from everything in my surroundings.

Whopple: Do you make a living with your art?
Victoria: Yep. I was fortunate in that within a year after graduating I was picked up by a local art consultant who started selling my work quickly. I figured if she was able to sell it, then others could as well so I sought out other consultants and galleries and my “day job” as a legal secretary went from full time to 2 days a week, then to zero within a few years.

I continued to work with consultants and galleries and had my work placed in collections worldwide for fifteen years or so. A major life change in 1998 forced me to reevaluate and reorganize my career. I suddenly became a single mother to a very young child and needed to ramp up my marketing abilities in a very short period of time. Like many artists I had been relying on others to market and place my work and most of it was in corporate collections including hospitals, hotels, corporations, and public collections.

I had a sort of revolution of mindset and learned everything I could about alternate venues and started applying to art fairs on the West Coast. I also set up a website, began doing my own framing, self published a line of giclee reproductions and thanks to the internet I networked with other artists and professionals to learn as much as I could about marketing my own work. I set up a business plan with short and long term goals, secured financing and basically took a huge leap of faith. I was following my intuition and everything seemed to fall into place. I worked very hard and with extreme focus to ramp up my career.

In 2000 I participated in my first series of art fairs and was hooked. Selling my work directly to private collectors continues to be the most gratifying experience of my career. Almost ten years later I have achieved a good balance of gallery representation and a select few art fairs that sustain me. I now coach emerging artists in my community both privately and through our local Small Business Resource Center. Assisting artists achieve their goals is especially gratifying to me.

Whopple: How many hours a day do you create?
Victoria: 24. At least I like to think of it that way. I don’t spend 24 hours in the studio, I spend maybe 4 to 5 hours in the studio per day but my mind is creating on auto pilot the rest of the time.

Whopple: How did you pick your creative medium?
Victoria: I work primarily in pastel and secondarily in oils. I started working in pastel in college after being inspired by a show of George Segal drawings at my school, California State University at Long Beach. His sculptures were there but he also showed figurative pastels. As I recall they were on a surface like construction paper and the color and gesture of marks were immediate and awe inspiring. Something clicked. I was in advanced life drawing, and advanced drawing and immediately threw myself into pastels. Having had a strong training in painting in oils, I do return to them for the love of the medium.

Whopple: What are your inspirations?
Victoria: The George Segal show from college. Other early inspirations were Mary Cassatt, John Singer Sargent, Winslow Homer, Edward Hopper, David Hockney and Jennifer Bartlett. Professionally I find myself more of an admirer than being inspired and my tastes run from the gamut contemporary realism to conceptual art to contemporaryÊcraft. I’ve collected art through the years in an ecclectic manner and was surprised to see how much photography I had actually accumulated.

Whopple: How do you recharge when your creativity hits the wall?
Victoria: Sleep.

Whopple: What was your first job?
Victoria: I had a few jobs running concurrently. I was hired to teach art to highly gifted students (the extremely intelligent ones) at a local grammar school – this was a wonderful job. I also worked at Universal Studios Tour -though I never actually went on the tour then or to this day!

Whopple: What are your favorite snacks when you are creating?
Victoria: Making time to eat is such a nuisance until I start feeling faint. I like to grab a handful of almonds or deluxe mixed nuts to carry me through so I don’t have to stop working.

Whopple: What gives you hope in the world?
Victoria: Raising my child.

Whopple: What do you wish you could do?
Victoria: Utilize more than 5% of my computer’s brain!

Whopple: What are your artistic goals?
Victoria: I spend a lot of time helping artists figure out and manifest their goals as artrepreneurs. I do need to put some attention back on myself at this time. I am constantly exploring new substrates and methods of working and have recently found a surface and method I particularly like for developing landscapes in pastel. I’d like to develop a series that I can hold back for exhibition rather than allowing them to be sold to quickly. I realize it sounds like a gold plated problem but since the recession has slowed down the quick pace that paintings were selling just a short time ago, I see this as an opportunity to develop a strong body of work without worrying about it
being bought up too quickly.

Whopple: What has been your most exciting moment as an artist?
Victoria: That would have to be at the beginning of my career. I was one year out of college and entered an International Art Competition relating in time and concept to the 1984 Olympics. There were about 100 finalists in each category. I won Second Place (silver medal) in Drawing for my pastels. Although I believed in my work I truly thought it was a mistake all the way up until the time I picked up my award at the show.

To see more of Victoria Ryan’s Artwork Please Visit The Following:
victoriaryan.com -blog – (lists galleries that show my work)
artbrokersinc.com – print publisher/distributor
artfulhome.com - online store

These Interviews With Artists Are Copyrighted To Whopple.com

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