More About Samantha
The earliest answer I can remember giving to “What do you want to be when you grow up?” was “artist.”
When I was in elementary school, I painted a picture of a vase and flowers for my grandmother. She loved it. She said it looked like it was done by a famous painter.
I had lots of watercolor books, coloring books, paints and took art classes in school whenever I could. As I got up into high school, and people asked me what I wanted to do with my life, I didn’t say “artist” anymore, though. I had been told I couldn’t make a living doing that, so I needed to be serious about the actual career I wanted for myself.
I went to college and studied things I enjoyed and that interested me, but not things that I was passionate about. When the money ran out for going to the University, I learned secretarial skills and did clerical and legal work. I still thought about art a lot. My then-boyfriend went to the Savannah College of Art and Design. I applied and was accepted to the college and was excited to go, but the tuition money I had was needed for rent and bills. I sat in on some of my boyfriend’s classes, though, and hung out with his college friends. I got to see how they developed their own skills, as sketchbooks were often passed around for appreciation and comment.
After graduation, boyfriend and I got married. Maybe if I couldn’t BE an artist, I’d marry one!
We moved to Florida. I still thought about art. My husband was trying to find a way to earn a living using his art skills, and I was paying the bills with my legal secretary job. I would flip through my husband’s college text books and buy the occasional “how to draw” or “how to paint” book for hobbyists.
During this time, I painted two landscapes from one of those art books in acrylic paint. I gave them to my grandmother and my mother. When my grandmother saw the one I gave to my mother, my grandmother said it would look SO much nicer in her house. So Grandmother got both paintings.
All thoughts of art were pushed WAY to the back of my mind when we bought a house and then had two children. Once my husband’s salary became enough to support us, I became a stay-at-home mom. But my husband’s job changed and then changed again for various reasons. We moved from Florida, to California, and then to Texas. Dreams of being an artist were a very distant memory by this time, as I just focused on the more immediate concerns of raising a family, paying the bills and all that living life entails.
When a sister-in-law wrote a song that she wanted published, she asked me to do the art for the CD cover. She knew just what she wanted and was sure I could do it. After lots of tweaks and emails, the cover image was finalized and she paid me for my work. Though I’d have done it for free, it was nice to say, “I’m a professional artist now!” (Here is the final CD.) Needless to say, this project rekindled the old interest in art.
Since both children started school, I had several hours a day to myself. I had been flexing my creative muscles learning to make family webpages and manipulating images in my husband’s art software. I enjoyed that very much and would spend hours learning and trying new things.
Somewhere along the information highway, I discovered webcomics. Someone must have sent me a funny one, so I went back to read the archives. I had already been reading my favorite newspaper comics online, but had no idea that people were making their own comics and publishing them on the web!
When a group of online friends started a weightloss group, we had to post in our group’s forum once a week. I thought it would be funny to post cartoons of what I was doing while dieting as my weekly post. The main character was a witch after my online name “Bewitched”… my online friends had long ago shortened that to “Witchy” and this was the beginnings of Life’s a Witch.
As of this writing, I finally consider myself an “artist” though not as I imagined when I was a little girl. I do not, and do not need to, make a living at art. An “artist” is just what I am. When people ask what I do, though, I say “cartoonist” or “web comicker”… but I know I have more paintings and designs in me. I’m sure I’ll get around to them now.
My grandmother is 91 years old and has all three of my paintings beautifully framed and hanging in her living room. She has a copy of “It Came from the Spare Bedroom,” a draft of the first collection of Life’s a Witch comics, on her coffee table. My mother tells me that whenever someone comes over to the house, Grandmother shows them her granddaughter’s paintings and book. If you should visit her, Grandmother would be happy to tell you all about her granddaughter–the artist.
(I love you, Grandmother!)
UPDATE: My wonderful Grandmother passed away in May, 2010. I was so fortunate to have her love and encouragement in my life.
