Images of an art-filled life

There exists a romantic idea of all artists, but especially those who live by picking up a brush and making an empty canvas come alive with visual images. There is also the sometimes harsh reality of trying to make a living by doing this.

Three Cape Girardeau high school seniors have taken the latter thought into consideration before deciding what direction to take their love of art after graduation.

Notre Dame's Kate Devaney and Central's Amber Branson and Lindsey Holman are young artists who are serious about their work and have been under the instruction of Cape Girardeau-based art instructor Brenda Seyer.

All three students currently have their artwork on display at Shawnee Community College Anna Center until the end of the month.

"They're being practical," Seyer said of her students' post-high school plans. "Because being an artist, you don't make a lot of money."

Devaney and Branson plan to focus on art in school either right after they graduate from high school or a few years down the road, while Holman wants to become a dentist and work on art in her free time.

Even the two girls who plan to pursue an art degree are not planning to study fine art. Nor do they want to spend their lives held up in a studio, painting, drawing, holding shows at galleries and selling their work.

Instead, they want to go into a field that utilizes their creativity, but provides more stability and structure.

Seyer said there are many design fields open to artists who are looking for a nine-to-five job.

"Everything we have or use has been designed by someone, all aspects of industry have some sort of designer. The hard part is to find that niche. It's always a lucky person who can do something they love and make money at it," Seyer said.

Holman and Devaney have been taking private lessons from Seyer for about the past eight years, while Branson started close to a year ago.

Each student has her own strengths and style, Seyer said.

"Usually a student will have their own personality come through in their work and I don't want to squelch the personality they put in it, that's what makes good art," she said.

Since Devaney has been with Seyer, she has competed several times in the Women's Club of Paducah Annual Art Show, receiving a first-place finish in 1996 and 2000.

She has also had her work exhibited at the St. Louis Art Museum Invitational Children's Exhibit, Barnes & Noble Booksellers in Cape Girardeau and the current show at Shawnee Community College Anna Center.

"She's been a very creative person from childhood on up," Seyer said of Devaney. "I was giving her the basics and then suddenly everything clicked. She's just blossomed beautifully and it was wonderful to watch."

Devaney said she remembers locking herself in her room as a little girl and spending hours working on personal art projects like giant maps of her neighborhood or a three-dimensional orchestra.

The mediums she concentrates on now are charcoals and conte crayons. She said a lot of her work is the outcome of whatever emotional state she happens to be in at the time.

Sometimes, Devaney said, she stops writing in her journal and draws instead because it is easier for her to release her feelings through drawing than writing.

"I've always enjoyed it, it's been a great stress reliever," Devaney said of her artwork.

One of the concerns Devaney has about entering into art as a profession is that the creative process would no longer be a stress reliever, but a stress producer.

"I don't want to be someone who paints all day and then has to go out and sell her paintings," she said. "I told my sister, it goes from being something that's a love to something you have to have done at a certain time."

At the same time, Devaney said she cannot imagine being in a career that is not in a creative field.

"My ultimate goal would be a job where I'd be creative but not have to worry about paying my rent," Devaney said.

She was not the only one concerned about the possible lack of money.

"My dad definitely had a problem with the income issue of being a starving artist," Devaney said.

So her plans are to attend college at the University of Missouri for about two years to study business and then go on to art school to study some type of graphic design.

The Chicago Institute of Art has already shown interest in Devaney and she said she is still considering whether that is where she will go after, or if, she leaves Missouri.

Branson has already been accepted into the studio art program at Maryville University, where she plans to major in art communications, a field that focuses on using multimedia for commercial work.

She shied away from pursuing a fine arts degree, in part, because she does not think it would be very stable. "I don't want to do something and not make a living at it," she said.

Her interest in art began in elementary school and only grew after she attended classes at Southeast Missouri State University's summer art program.

"It's the only thing that's kept my interest," she said of art. "I like the freedom. All the other classes are so structured."

Although she has been active in school art classes for years, Branson just began her lessons with Seyer.

"Amber is very good with pen and ink and watercolors," Seyer said. "These are mediums that require a lot of discipline."

Branson said she especially likes to use popular figures from music, movies and television as subjects for her work because she likes to create something that is instantly recognizable.

"To me art is a form of escapism. When I get frustrated or need to remove myself from the real world, working on my pieces helps me. Art is also a kind of friend. It's always their when I need it," wrote Branson in her artists' statement for the Anna exhibition.

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In Holman's artist's statement she wrote, "I want my pictures to affect people in their own way. What a piece means to a person depends a lot on what that person has experienced and what they think when they look at certain objects, which is one of the reasons I like to experiment with different mediums and ideas."

Holman has also been a student of Seyer's for close to a decade and has taken part in the Women's Club of Paducah Annual Art Show and had her work shown at Cape Girardeau's Barnes & Noble.

She has also taken part in a workshop at the Kansas City Art Institute.

Despite her art background, though, Holman is considering attending a dental school in St. Louis. Holman became interested in dentistry after a church medical trip to Jamaica where she acted as a dental assistant.

"It'd be something I could do and still do my artwork. It'd be good because I would have the resources to do the art," Holman said

She is also considering attending Washington University with a double major in art and ecology.

In her talks with art teachers Holman took away that making a living as an artist is not an easy thing to achieve. Some people she talked to went into teaching because it was the easiest way to make a living while still working in the art field.

No matter what her college plans are, Holman said she is not going to give up on her art.

"I'm going to be doing it for the rest of my life," she said. "There are so many possibilities with it and you can never get bored with that."

kalfisi@semissourian.com

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