Sheila M. Evans

Well, almost. Did I say I wasn’t going to take another design job? I made it just over 24 hours without taking one. Pretty good huh! It’s not really design, though, just scanning some artwork for the museum at the university where I used to work. And it’s a one-time job so that doesn’t really count. I’ll be scanning over 150 photos by Andy Warhol. It should be an interesting project. I will post an image later if the museum director will allow it.
I have been doing some actual painting, too. This was the best part of not having to drop everything and go into work three times a week. I can now paint in oils! I could before, and had done a few, but it was so frustrating to start a painting then have to leave it for a day, or two or three. I would inevitably come back to a painting too dry to work and then have to backtrack. Nothing like sitting in an office while a painting reaches, then passes, the perfect working stage.
Speaking of which, my latest painting is calling to me…

Hi, my name is Sheila and I am, as of today, a full-time painter.  What follows is a brief story of how I got into this (hopefully great) predicament:

I wasn’t supposed to be here, not quite yet anyway. For years I’ve dreamed of leaving various jobs as a graphic designer to become a painter.  Three years ago I cut down to a part-time design job and have been working hard, painting on my days off and selling at art fairs and in galleries, and things have at last been taking off.  So, one year from now my husband and I decided I would finally leave the job. Then an assistant VP (who shall remain nameless) at the university where I worked finally did one rotten thing too many and we hastily bumped up our plan by a year.  I gave four weeks notice then headed to the Sausalito Art Festival.  Amusingly, on the trip back we received a phone call from work: the assistant VP had accepted a position at another college.  After thinking it over for about a minute we decided to go ahead with our decision, and here I sit: a full-time artist.

Hopefully over the next weeks/months/years I will chronicle here my meteoric rise to success as a painter in pastels and oils. Right. At the very least I hope to talk about the art, the ups and downs of the business, the stories from the road, and any other discoveries along my way to not taking another design job.

Time to go to work.