After my daughter was born, I realized that while I was doing quite a few commissioned portraits a year, my income was not enough to provide for our needs. I decided to significantly raise my fees and then focused my attention on an advertising campaign. I placed ads in Veranda magazine, sent a press release with professional photos to the local paper and mailed out several hundred postcards in the Knoxville area. The press release was the least expensive with the best results. The paper printed a large article featuring my portraits and me. I received many calls before this, including one from Susan Walker, the local representative with Leon Loard Portraits, Inc., saying they were very interested in representing me.

Around the same time I attended the National Portrait Seminar in Atlanta given by John Howard Sanden. I had never met any other portrait artists and had no idea what to expect. The only other artists I knew were abstract or conceptual artists who abhorred representational art. The seminar was a revelation. I was expecting a bunch of starving artists but what I saw were successful business people. One after another of these amazing people spoke on their painting techniques, portrait procedures, photography and many other important topics that I had never heard addressed. In just a few days I learned more useful information than I had in four years of college.

Armed with all this information, I went home and got to work. I was inspired by the realization that being a portrait artist could be a wonderful career. I had many commissions ahead of me as a result of my advertising campaign, but what was needed next was the discipline to complete them within a reasonable time. I accomplished this by setting a series of goals for myself and writing them down. In addition to monthly goals, each day I would set short-term goals to be completed that day. Accomplishing these self-imposed deadlines has become a way of life for me now and every morning I am driven to start painting.

I have also gradually accepted the responsibilities that go with owning my own business. I have a business license and pay sales tax. Because my income grew so rapidly, I was unprepared for the amount of sales tax I needed to pay. It has taken me awhile to realize that a lot of that money was not mine, and to send quarterly payments to the IRS. Because the benefits of my job are paid to me, I have decided that a health insurance with a high deductible but low monthly payments works best. I have also been persuaded that even though I plan never to retire, a retirement plan would probably be a good idea. I have opened a SEP-IRA to which self-employed individuals can contribute 15% of their earned income or $24,000, whichever is less, each year and deduct that amount from their income tax.

Of course, I realize that business is not the most important part of a career in portrait painting. While I have a deep desire to create beautiful paintings, I understand that I'm still rather inept. Fortunately, my clients don’t feel this way and this provides me with one of the greatest learning tools, the luxury of spending hours behind the easel each day. I paint with reproductions of beautiful paintings in front of me, by artists such as Cecilia Beaux, John Singer Sargent and Joe Bowler and learn by studying their color combinations and value structures. I also learn much from conversations with other portrait artists and treasure their friendships. From them I can constantly told how important it is to paint from life and am making a great effort to do this.

I have been amazed at how I came upon this wonderful career and every day I can’t believe how blessed I am to be paid for doing something I love.