SUSAN KRIEG

While growing up, I remember loving any and all art-related projects, whether it was trying to stay within the coloring book lines or cutting, out shapes in grade-school art class to make holiday bunnies and valentines. The process absorbed my entire being.

Sometimes I have to laugh at myself now, because I’m still doing what I so enjoyed back then: tearing up paper, cutting out shapes and coloring—with less concern, however, for staying in the lines. Art was considered fairly harmless and it kept me occupied, so I was left alone with my creative endeavors. Back then, folks assumed that if you were a girl and not academically driven, you would get married and that would be that.

By the time I faced college, I was an unmarried mother of a 4-year-old. I still loved art and naively believed that if I went to college and took art classes I would automatically get an art job.

On my fist day at California College of Arts and Crafts an instructor announced to the class, ‘I hope you all realize that only 5 percent of you who graduate will ever work in a job even remotely related to art”.

After that pronouncement, I suffered many bouts of “Give up that silly hobby and get a real job”, or “You should be an accountant, not an artist!”

As the end of art school approached, I asked, “Now what” and another instructor advised me, “Whatever you have to, to support your habit.” So I succumbed to the pressures of supporting myself and my art ‘habit.

Over the next 14 years I worked as a secretary, a bookkeeper, a waitress, a bartender and a fitter in a frame shop to support my son and my art.

Looking back over my career and job choices, it is easy to see how things fit together. The clerical and the bookkeeping skills I learned are essential in my own business, and I’m so pleased now that I can frame my paintings. I’ve been supporting myself in the art world since 1988, and it’s the best job I’ve ever had; not always’ the most lucrative, but certainly the most satisfying.