Kids create under the guidance of Kate Langlais during “Art in the Park” at Faribault’s Central Park in 2020. Photo by Audrey Kletscher Helbling new places made me even more interested in creating landscape and portrait art. We’re all familiar with the term “starving artist.” Did you consider other career choices or was art something you always knew would be your life’s professional work? I’d like to hear about that decision, whether you faced obstacles or whether it was simply a matter of pursuing your passions. Ah, yes. I did think about other art-related jobs like graphic design or getting my teaching license, but I really felt like I was in a position to pursue my real passion for art. I saved up my babysitting money all through my teenage years, chose the cheapest possible colleges and worked many different types of jobs to make ends meet. I lived in a van for a while to travel and avoid the usual expenses of rent/utilities. This definitely made for some great artistic inspiration. You work primarily in oil paint and charcoal, but also use graphite and chalk pastels. Why those particular art mediums? Throughout college I worked with so many different media in all my classes. I guess those are the ones that really stuck for me, especially the oil paint and the charcoal. They just work really great for creating portraits and my clients love the results of those especially when it comes to larger commissions. Your specialties are portraits and landscapes. What prompted you to choose those artistic focuses? I’ve always been pretty drawn to landscape and portrait art. I’ve definitely dabbled in other subjects but those are just what really stuck for me. A good chunk of creating art is observing and those subjects really tend to jump out at me as I experience the world. Let’s talk about portraits first. Your subjects range from commissioned work to family to faith subjects and more. What’s the process of creating a portrait? What challenges you in the process? And how do you know when you’ve succeeded in creating that “just right”
A young artist brushes paint into a scene during “Art in the Park,” led by Kate Langlais. Photo by Audrey Kletscher Helbling portrait? The process for each portrait looks a bit different depending on the situation. Sometimes it starts with a photo from the internet or from the client. Other times (and these are my favorite) I
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get to sit with clients for sketches and I take my own photos of them to work from later. Drawing a portrait can take up to a few
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