The Novice Professional

Have you ever had a holiday dinner with extended family where the adults sat at one table and the kids sat at another? Now, imagine being a child; there is an open seat at the adult table and you just slid right on in there and hoped no one would notice.

That’s what it felt like being accepted into my first exhibition.

I started painting professionally after four months and with only ten paintings to my name. I joined a national artist organization and from there, I submitted that tenth painting to be considered for their annual juried show. After combing through websites that explained the pretty bleak odds of being accepted into exhibitions, I was well prepared for rejection. What I did not expect to see was an email with the word “Invited” next to the title of my painting.

All I could think was, “Somebody is going to find out that I don’t know what I’m doing!”

People don’t usually jump into the deep end without first learning how to swim so starting at that level caused some weird anxieties. People asked about my process and my background and I didn’t feel comfortable talking about it because I knew it sounded ridiculous. The truth made me feel like a fraud.

My background is that I almost failed my high school art class and learned color theory by decorating cakes for my kids. My painting process was “See a blob, paint a blob.” I did not know the types of paint brushes and I learned who Bob Ross was almost a year after I started painting. It was even awkward calling myself a self-taught painter because I didn’t teach myself anything. I just sort of fumbled around and did it. I drove a painting from Mississippi to North Carolina for my first in-person exhibition because I had no idea how to ship it! Thankfully, the gallery director was SO nice and when I admitted why I showed up in person, she took me into the gallery’s storage area and showed me the different ways to package artwork.

I’ve been accepted into almost two dozen exhibitions since then and even so, I am still learning and growing as an artist. I have finally accepted the unconventional way I got here and decided to embrace it, not hide it.

This is who I am.

I am the Novice Professional.