Why I Created My Online Art School
I often get asked why I decided to teach in addition to being a full-time artist. For me it came from the need to make art more accessible.
Me receiving a college art education was the result of a heavy dose of luck. I grew up very low income, and while I had always hoped to go to college, it certainly wasn’t a trajectory I was heading towards without financial assistance. I was fortunate that that help came to me in the form of an athletic scholarship.
It’s sometimes wild for me to think where I’d be in life without stumbling into cross country as a high school freshman, but I committed myself to running throughout high school and I was rewarded with a scholarship that paid for my college tuition. I worked really hard to get to that point, but I still consider myself very lucky because the local college I was accepted to not only had a cross country coach willing to take a chance on me, but also an outstanding art program. My painting professor, Todd Lowery, changed my life with his generous teaching approach and his passion for art. I couldn’t help but want to share the lessons he taught me with everyone I could.
A few years into my post-college painting career, I had an “aha” moment that set me on the path from a teaching idea to a plan to make it a reality. I had posted a greenhouse painting on Instagram when a follower commented that they could never make something so good.
Of course, it was a compliment, but the comment kind of bothered me because I knew that my work was the product of great teaching and years of practice. I could not have run 20 miles without stopping when I started cross country as a ninth grader, but by the end of college I did that regularly. Painting for me was the same; talent wasn’t the driving force for my work but a thorough technical base from which to grow a practice.
I can trace what happened next to that Instagram comment. Recognizing that the financial barrier to art education was such a deterrent for a lot of artists, I set out to create Not Sorry Art School as a way to pass on the knowledge I learned in college, and in my career thus far, in a more accessible way.
I had already been teaching a few in-person workshops, but when Covid hit in 2020 I suddenly had the impetus to make an online course. I connected with a videographer and editor extraordinaire and we collaborated on a fundamentals course that detailed the materials I use, how I set up my environment for painting, and my technical approach for color, light and composition. I released that in August of 2020 and now two years later we’ve added nine more courses to total more than 300 instructional videos and 25 hours of content. My mantra with the course is that everyone can learn to paint, and with each technique I try to demystify the process.
All this would not have been possible for me without the top notch art education I got in college, but the knowledge I gained from that experience certainly isn’t exclusive to college art students. My life changed forever when I was taught how to paint, and that has motivated me to share these lessons so more people can experience the power of art like I did.
Visit notsorryartschool for more information. I am currently running a 20% off sale through Sept. 1 for all Lifetime Tuition enrollees. Use code BACKTOSCHOOL at checkout.